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THE    HANDBOOK    SERIES 


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THE  HANDBOOK  SERIES 


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THE    HANDBOOK    SERIES 


SELECTED  ARTICLES  ON 

THE  NEGRO  PROBLEM 


COMPILED  BY 

JULIA  E.  JOHNSEN 


NEW  YORK 

THE  H.  W.  WILSON  COMPANY 
LONDON:  GRAFTON  &  Co. 

1921 


Published  December   1921 
Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 


EXPLANATORY  NOTE 

This  volume  is  intended  to  be  an  interpretation  of  the 
leading  aspects  of  the  Negro  Problem  of  today,  in  compact 
and  convenient  form,  suitable  for  the  student,  debater  or 
general  reader.  A  preliminary  view  of  the  history  and 
status  of  the  Negro  in  our  civilization  is  given,  with  other 
material  of  general  interest,  followed  by  the  more  specific 
phases  of  our  race  relationships — the  problem  itself — with 
special  consideration  to  its  leading  divisions,  controversial  or 
otherwise,  race  prejudice,  amalgamation,  education,  violence 
including  lynching,  race  riots  and  peonage,  the  Negro  of  the 
South  and  the  North,  Negro  suffrage,  the  Negro  in  industry, 
segregation  and  colonization,  and,  lastly,  the  expression  of  opinion 
as  to  the  future  or  the  best  way  to  racial  peace. 

In  accordance  with  the  general  plan  of  the-  Handbook 
Series,  the  constant  aim  in  both  reprints  and  bibliography 
has  been  for  impartiality  toward  all  views,  and  selections 
have  been  chosen  from  both  white  and  Negro  writers,  from 
opposers  and  sympathizers  of  the  Negro  alike,  yet  with  the 
aim  not  so  much  to  maintain  exact  balance  as  to  give  ex 
pression  to  views  that  reflect  representative  opinions  and 
conditions  of  race  friction,  and  that  serve  best  to  indicate 
the  way  for  constructive  effort. 

The  limits  of  this  volume  prevent  the  full  consideration 
that  would  be  desirable  on  each  phase  of  the  subject,  and 
has  necessitated  the  omission  of  much  excellent  material. 
In  particular  some  topics  more  or  less  familiar  to  the  general 
reader,  such  as  the  period  of  American  slavery,  or  emancipation, 
have  been  touched  upon  lightly  in  the  interest  of  material  of 
more  vital  importance.  The  reader  will  find  in  the  selected 
and  annotated  bibliography  valuable  material  for  a  more  com 
plete  study. 

The  classified  divisions  of  bibliography  and  reprints  are 
not  absolute,  but  overlap  considerably.  It  has  been  thought 


4G3312 


EXPLANATORY  NOTE 

desirable,  however,  to  avoid  repetitions  in  the  bibliography 
under    different   headings,    and,    as    far    as    possible,    in    the 
subdivision  of  selections,  which  are  entered  where  they  will 
be  of  most  immediate  interest. 
June  16,  1921.  JULIA  E.  JOHNSEN 


CONTENTS 

BIBLIOGRAPHY xi 

ORGANIZATIONS  i 

INTRODUCTION 3 

HISTORY 

Origin  of  the  Negro    Race    II 

\4lie_  World-Position  of  the  Negro  and  Negroid 20 

Beginning  of  Slavery 28 

Alienation  of  the  Races  32 

GENERAL 

Negroes  in  America  35 

Some  Advantages  the  Negro  Enjoys  in  the  United  States.  36* 

Psychology  of  the  Negro — An  Experimental  Study 38" 

Serving  New  York's  Black  City    44 

Negro  in  Literature  and  Art 48 

Rural  Negro  and  the  South  53 

PROBLEM 

» A  Negro  to  America  59 

Fuse,  Fight  or  Fail !    59 

The    Negro    in    Relation    to    Our    Public    Agencies    and 

Institutions 62 

Changed  Attitude  of  the  Negro    66 

Relations  of  the  Advanced  and  Backward  Races  of  Man- 

f  kind    69 

"VNegro  Problem 73 

Proposed  Solution  of  the  Race  Problem 7^ 

Negro  in  the  North  85 

v^The  Menace  of  Race  Hatred  86 

Social  Cost  of  Southern  Race  Prejudice 88 

Relation  of  Negroes  to  the  Whites  92 

What  Does  the  Negro  Want  in  Our  Democracy? 94 

The  New  Negro 

Race  Riots  and  Their  Remedy  105 


viii  CONTENTS 

Race    Problem    106 

Kuklux  Klan  Revival   108 

Social  Basis  of  Race  Prejudice  116 

e  Heart  of  the  Race  Problem   117^- 

Tragedy   of   Color    1 19 

Hostility  Toward  the  Negro    127 

In  Terms  of  Humanity  128 

""Tragedy  of  the  Mulatto   129 

Brazil  and  the  Negro   135 

VIOLENCE— LYNCHING,  RACE  RIOTS  AND  PEONAGE 

Lynching  Record  for  1920  141 

Practice  of    Lynching  in   the   United    States 142 

Lynching :  A  National  Menace 149 

Concerning  Lynching  152 

Race  Riots   in  Relation  to  Democracy   154 

VWhat  is  Behind  the  Negro  Uprising? 157    ' 

\  The  Economic  Interpretation  of  Peonage 161 

S  Fruits  of  Peonage 166 

-"-EDUCATION 

The  Education  of  the  Southern  Negro  169 

Task  of  the  Leader 176 

Can  the  Negro  Be  Educated  ?   178 

Negro  Education  180 

National    Responsibility    for    Education    of    the    Colored 

*  People   186 

/        Progress  in  the  Education  of  the  Negro 189 

I        The  Higher  Education  of  the  Negro  193 

NEGRO  SUFFRAGE 

Disfranchising  the   Negro    199 

Undoing  of   Reconstruction    203 

Problems  of  Citizenship    207  „> 

Why  Disfranchisement  is  Bad   213  - 

The  Ballotless  Victim  of  One-Party  Governments 225 

Negro  Suffrage 232 

^/Has  the  Fifteenth  Amendment  Been  Justified? 233 

Representation    238 


CONTENTS  ix 

MIGRATION 

Negro    Migration   During   the    War    245 

Efforts  to  Check  the  Movement    250 

Effects  of  the  Movement  on  the  South   255 

NEGRO  IN  INDUSTRY 

His  Industrial  Success  259  ^ 

Effect  of  War  Conditions  on  Negro  Labor 261 

The   Negro  in   Industry    269 

Bill  of  Labor  Rights   274 

The  Negro  and  His  Opportunity   276 

RACE   SEPARATION — SEGREGATION  AND^  COLONIZATION 

Unconstitutionality  of  Negro  Segregation   281  -~ 

Race  Segregation  in  the  United  States    283    ' 

Conditions  Among  Negroes  in  the  Cities  291 

Gunpowder  of   Race  Antagonism    294 

My  View  of  the  Segregation  Laws   296 

Rural  Land  Segregation  Between  Whites  and  Negroes....  297 

The  President  and  the  Segregation  at  Washington 300 

Historic  Attempts  to  Solve  Race  Problem   in  America  by 

Deportation    303 

Black  and  White  in  the   South    306 

Negro's  Fatherland 312 

Future   of   the   Negro    315    V  / 


317 

FUTURE 

Proposed  Solution  of  the  Race  Problem   ................  321 

•Psychological   Factor  in   Southern   Race   Problems  ........  329 

Practical  Application  of  Christianity  to  the  American  Race- 

Problem    .............................................  .  332 

An  Object-Lesson  in  the   Solution  of   Race   Problems  ----  335 

Race  Problem   ...........................................  339 

White  Man's  Debt  to  the  Negro   ........................  341 

The  South  Taking  Up  the  Problem   ......................  343 

Way  to  Racial  Peace    ...................................  347 

Ultimate  Race  Problem  ........................  ;  .........  35^ 

Future   of   the   Negro    People    ...........................  356 

Garvey's  Empire  of  Ethiopia   ............................  364 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Articles  starred  (*)  have  been  reprinted  entirely  or  in  part  in  this 
handbook. 

BIBLIOGRAPHIES 

Atlanta  University  Publications.  No.  10.  Select  bibliography  of 
the  Negro  American.  U2p.  Atlanta,  Ga.  1906. 

Murray,  Daniel.  Preliminary  list  of  books  and  pamphlets  by 
Negro  authors.  8p.  Library  of  Congress.  1900. 

Sieg,  Vera.  Negro  problem:  a  bibliography.  22p.  Wisconsin 
Free  Library  Commission.  Madison,  Wis.  1908. 

Young's  Book  Exchange.  Priced  catalogue  of  books  pertain 
ing  to  Negroes.  28p.  135  W.  i35th  St,  New  York.  1918. 

HISTORY 

Books,  Pamphlets  and  Documents 
Brawley,    Benjamin    Griffith.      Short   history   of   the   American 

Negro.     247p.     Macmillan   Co.     New   York.     1913. 
DuBois,    W.    E.    Burghardt.     Negro.     254p.     soc.     Henry    Holt 

&   Co.     New  York.     1915. 

Bibliography    p.    244-52. 

Harding,  Samuel  Bannister,  ed.  Contest  over  slavery;  Civil 
war  and  reconstruction.  In  Select  orations  illustrating  Amer 
ican  political  history,  p.  242-507.  Macmillan  Co.  New  York. 
1909. 

Hill,  Mabel.     Liberty  documents,     p.  340-87.     Longmans,  Green 
&  Co.  New  York.     1901. 
Rights  of  slaves  and  their  race,  ch.   XXI,   Emancipation  of  the  slaves, 

ch.  XXII,   Reconstruction  amendments,   ch.   XXIII. 

Johnson,  Allen,  ed.  Slavery  and  the  constitution.  In  Readings 
in  American  constitutional  history,  p.  405-63.  Houghton 
Mifflin  Co.  Boston.  1912. 

Chapters  are:  Slavery  in  the  territories,  Rendition  of  fugitive  slaves, 
Doctrine  of  popular  sovereignty,  Dred  Scott  v.  Sanford,  Dred  Scot  decision, 
Secession  and  coercion. 

*Johnston,  Sir  Harry  H.  World  position  of  the  Negro  and 
Negroid.  Universal  Races  Congress.  Papers  on  inter-racial 
problems,  p.  328-36.  P.  D.  King  &  Son.  London.  1911. 


xii  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Merriam,  George  S.  Negro  and  the  nation.  436p.  Henry 
Holt  &  Co.  New  York.  1906. 

History  of  American  slavery  and  enfranchisement. 

Morel,  E.  D.  Black  man's  burden.  24ip.  B.  W.  Huebsch. 
New  York.  1920. 

Suffering  which  Europe  has  inflicted  upon  Africa. 
Page,  Thomas  Nelson.     Southern  people  during  reconstruction. 

In  Old  Dominion,    p.  235-80.    Charles  Scribner's  Sons.    New 

York.     1908. 
*Washington,   Booker  T.   Story  of  the  Negro;  the  rise  of  the 

race  from  slavery.    2v.    Doubleday,  Page  &  Co.    New  York. 

1909. 

Pt.  i.  The  Negro  in  Africa;  pt.  2.  The  Negro  as  a  slave;  pt.  3. 
The  Negro  as  a  freeman. 

Wilbur,  Henry  W.  President  Lincoln's  attitude  towards  slavery 
and  emancipation.  22Op.  Walter  H.  Jenkins.  Philadelphia. 
1914. 

Periodical   References 

*Current  Literature.     36:526-8.   My.     '04.     Mr.   Page's   reply  to 

Mr.    Schurz. 

Mistakes  of  reconstruction. 

Journal  of  Race  Development.  1 1482-502.  Ap.  'u.  Contribu 
tion  of  the  Negro  to  human  civilization.  Alexander  Francis 

Chamberlain. 

Bibliography,    p.    501-2. 
McClure's    Magazine.     22:548-54,   619-26;    23:96-102.     Mr.-My. 

'04.      Negro:    the    Southerner's    problem.      Thomas    Nelson 

Page. 

Reconstruction. 
*North    American    Review.      170:656-65.      My.    'oo.      Origin    of 

the  Negro  race.     Henry  M.  Stanley. 
Sewanee  Review.    21 :  428-47.     O.  '13.    Reminiscences  of  the  civil 

war  by  a  confederate  staff  officer.     A.  R.  H.  Ransom. 

Plantation   life   in   Virginia   before   the  war,   and  John   Brown's   raid. 

GENERAL 
Books,  Pamphlets  and  Documents 

Atlanta  University  Publications.  Nos.  1-20.  Atlanta  University 
Press.  Atlanta,  Ga. 

Titles  are:  i.  Mortality  among  Negroes  in  cities,  24p.,  1903;  2.  Social 
and  physical  conditions  of  Negroes  in  cities,  1897;  3.  Some  efforts  of 
Negroes  for  social  betterment,  1898;  4.  Negro  in  business,  1899;  5.  College- 
bred  Negro,  1900;  6.  Negro  common  school,  1901;  7.  Negro  artisan,  1902; 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  xiii 

8.  Negro  church,  1903;  9.  Crime  among  Negroes  in  Georgia,  1904;  10. 
Select  bibliography  of  the  Negro  American,  1906;  n.  Health  and  physique 
of  the  Negro  American,  1906;  12.  Economic  cooperation  among  Negro 
Americans,  1907;  13.  Negro  American  family,  1908;  14.  Efforts  for  social 
betterment  among  Negro  Americans,  1909;  15.  College-bred  Negro  Ameri 
can,  1910;  1 6.  Common  school  and  the  Negro  American,  1911;  17.  Negro 
American  artisan,  1912;  18.  Morals  and  manners  among  Negro  Americans, 
1914;  19.  Economic  cooperation  among  the  Negroes  of  Georgia,  1917;  20. 
Select  discussions  of  race  problems,  1916. 

*Bailey,   Thomas   Pearce.     Race  orthodoxy   in  the    South,   and 

other    aspects    of    the    Negro    question.      386p.    Neale    Pub. 

Co.     New  York.     1914. 

Contains  much  suggestive  material. 
Baker,    Ray   Stannard.     Following  the   color   line ;   an   account 

of    Negro    citizenship    in    the    American    democracy.      314?. 

Doubleday,    Page    &   Co.    Garden   City,    N.Y.    1908. 

These  and  other  articles  first  published  in  the  American  Magazine. 
v.  63-66.  1907-8. 

Brawley,  Benjamin.     Your   Negro  neighbor.     loop.     6oc.    Mac- 

millan  Co.     New  York.     1918. 
Dowd,  Jerome.     Negro  races;  a  sociological  study.     2v.     Mac- 

millan   Co.     New   York.     1907,    1914. 

V.  i.    West  Africans,  v.  2.  East  and  South  Africans. 
DuBois,  W.  E.  Burghardt.     Darkwater;  voices  from  within  the 

veil.     276p.      $2.      Harcourt,    Brace    &    Howe.      New   York. 

1920. 
DuBois,   W.   E.   Burghardt.     Souls  of  black   folk.  264?.   A.   C. 

McClurg   &   Co.    Chicago.      1903. 

Essays  and  sketches. 

Ferris,  William  H.     African  abroad.    2v.     Tuttle,  Morehouse  & 
Taylor   Press.     New   Haven,   Conn.     1913. 
Traces   his   development   under   western  civilization. 

Harris,  John  H.     Africa  slave  or  free?     244p.  Student  Chris 
tian  Movement.    London.  1919. 
Best   on    exploitation   of  Africa. 

Johnson,  Franklin.  Development  of  state  legislation  concerning 
the  free  Negro.  2o;p.  Arbor  Press,  Inc.  New  York.  1918. 

Johnston,  Sir  Harry  H.  Black  man's  part  in  the  war.  I28p. 
Simpkin,  Marshall,  Hamilton,  Kent  &  Co.  Ltd.  London. 

1917- 

Mainly  Negro  of  the  British  Empire. 

Johnston,  Sir  Harry  H.  Negro  in  the  new  world.  499p.  Me- 
thuen  &  Co.  Ltd.  London.  1910. 

"A  detailed  account  of  the  native  of  each  territory  in  the  new  world 
occupied  by  Negroes  or  Negroids."  Nature.  85:172-3.  "  D.  8,  '10.  Review 
by  Theodore  Roosevelt.  Outlook.  95:241-4.  Je.  4,  '10. 


xiv  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

McCord,  Chas.  H.  American  Negro  as  a  dependent,  defective 
and  delinquent.  342?.  Benson  Printing  Co.  Nashville,  Tenn. 
1914. 

Mayo,  Marion  J.  Mental  capacity  of  the  American  Negro.  7op, 
Author.  New  York  City.  1913. 

Reprinted  from   the   Archives   of  Psychology,   no.   28. 

Mitchell,  Geo.  W.  Question  before  Congress.     247?.  A.  M.  E. 

Book  Concern.     Philadelphia.     1918. 

A  consideration  of  the  debates  upon  various  phases  of  the  race  ques 
tion. 

National  Association  for  the  Advancement  of  Colored  People. 

Report.     1919.     I03p.     70  Fifth  Ave.,  New  York.     1920. 
Odum,  Howard  W.  Social  and  mental  traits  of  the  Negro.  3029. 

Columbia    University    Studies    in    History,    Economics    and 

Public  Law.    v.  37.     1910. 
Roman,  C.  V.  American  civilization  and  the  Negro.  434p.  $2.50. 

F.  A.  Davis  Co.     Philadelphia.     1916. 

A  broad  and  strong  defense  of  the  Negro. 

*  Roundy,  Rodney  W.  Negro;  an  asset  of  the  American  nation. 

i6p.     Home   Mission   Council,    156   Fifth   Ave.,   New   York. 
(1920?). 

*  Seligmann,  Herbert  J.     Negro  faces  America.  319?.  Harper 

&  Bros.  New  York.   1920. 
An  impressionistic  study. 

Smith,  William  Benjamin.  Color  line.  26ip.  McClure,  Phillips 
&  Co.  New  York.  1905. 

Argues  for  the  inherent  inferiority  of  the  black  race  along  lines  his 
torical,  statistical,  biological,  ethnological,  and  anthropological. 

Southern      Sociological      Congress.      Addresses.      1913:368-419. 

Nashville. 

Economic  status  of  the  Negro.  William  M.  Huntley,  p.  368-77;  Negro 
as  a  farmer,  J.  H.  De  Loach,  p.  378-82;  Negro  working  out  his  own  sal 
vation  (farm  ownership),  E.  C.  Branson,  p.  383-97;  Social  and  hygienic  con 
dition  of  the  Negro  and  needed  reforms,  Josiah  Morse,  p.  397-405;  Preva 
lence  of  contagious  and  infectious  diseases  among  the  Negroes,  George  W. 
Hubbard,  p.  406-12. 

Stephenson,  Gilbert  Thomas.  Race  distinctions  in  American  law. 
388p.  D.  Appleton  &  Co.  New  York.  1910. 

Articles  also  printed  in  American  Political  Science  Review.  1:44-61; 
3:180-204;  N.  '06,  My.  '09.  American  Law  Review.  43:29-52,  205-27,  354- 
81,  547-90,  695-758,  869-905.  Ja.-N.  '09. 

Stimson,  Frederic  Jesup.  Legislation  concerning  personal  and 
racial  rights.  In  Popular  law-making,  p.  308-16.  Charles 
Scribner's  Sons.  New  York.  1910. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  xv 

Webster,   Edgar   H.   Chums   and  brothers.     247p.     Richard  G. 
Badger.    Boston.     1920. 
Interprets  the  Negro  broadly  and  sympathetically. 

Periodical  Articles 

American   Economic   Review.     4:281-92.     Je.   '14.     Movements 

of  Negro  population  as  shown  by  census  of  1910.    John  C. 

Rose. 

Detailed  study   of  distribution. 
Annals  of  the  American  Academy.     49:67-73.     S.  '13.     White 

man's  debt  to  the  Negro.     L.  H.  Hammond. 

Home   missions   and  social   welfare. 
*Annals  of  the  American  Academy.    49:233-7.    S.  '13.    Negro  in 

literature  and  art.     W.  E.  Burghardt  DuBois. 
*Archives  of  Psychology,    v.  5.  serial  no.  36:1-138.    1915.    Psy 
chology  of  the  Negro — an  experimental  study.    George  Oscar 

Furguson,  Jr. 
Atlantic.  93:588-97.     My.     '04.     Part  of  a  man's  life.     Thomas 

Wentworth   Higginson. 

Negroes   are   "intensely  human." 
Atlantic.    97 : 245-50.     F.  '06.    Joys  of  being  a  Negro.    Edward 

E.  Wilson. 
Century.    85:46-55.    N.  '12.    Is  the  Negro  having  a  fair  chance? 

Booker  T.  Washington. 
Commercial   and   Financial  Chronicle.     112:98-100.     Ja.  8,   '21. 

Negro,  the  crucial  problem. 
Congressional  Record.    59 :  7481-3.    My  22,  '20.    Commission  on 

the  racial  question. 
Crisis.    8:184-8.  Ag.  '14.     How    the    National    Association    for 

the  Advancement  of  Colored    People    began.    Mary    White 

Ovington. 
Edinburgh    Review.      230:78-92.      Jl.    '19.      Colour    problem    in 

South  Africa.     W.   C.   Scully. 
Forum.     55 : 269-79.     Mr.  '16.     Fifty  years  of  Negro  progress. 

Booker  T.  Washington. 

Independent.     75:373-6.     Ag.  14,  '13.     Adventures    of    a    near- 
white. 
Journal  of  Negro  History.     1:110-31.     Ap.  '16.     Negro  soldier 

in  the  American  revolution. 
"Library  Journal.    46:255-8.    Mr.  15,  '21.    Serving  New  York's 

black  city.     Ernestine  Rose. 


xvi  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

*Literary  Digest.     63:40.     D.  20,   '19.     Negroes  in  America. 

Concludes  our  present  school   program  is  not  fitted  for  the  large  mass 
of  the  Negro  race. 

Nation.  113:357-8.    S  28,  '21.    Pan- African  ideal. 

Manifesto   of   the   Pan-African   Congress   in   Session   at   London. 
Natural    History.      19:680-6.      D.    '19.      Intelligence    of    Negro 

recruits.     M.  R.  Trabue. 
North  American  Review.     183:1285-8.     D.     21,  '06.     Color  line 

in  the   Army.     Matthew   F.   Steele. 

Protest  against  discriminations. 
Outlook.     123:39.     S.  10,  '19.     Is  there  an  explanation?     Rossa 

B.  Cooley. 

Comments  upon  the  failure  to  have  Negro  troops  in  the  Great  Victory 
Parade  in  Paris  on  July   14. 

Pedagogical    Seminary.     23:199-203.      Je.    '16.      Some    sugges 
tions  relative  to  a  study  of  the  mental  attitude  of  the  Ne 
gro. 
Argues    investigations    of    the    Negro    by    the    white    race    are    per    se, 

erroneous.      Difficulties    in    way    of    the    white    race    making    satisfactory 

studies  of  Negro  psychology. 

*Putnam's  Monthly.     3 : 67-70.     O.  '07.     American  Negro  of  to 
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World  Tomorrow.     4:24-6.     Ja.  '21.     What  manner  of  man  is 
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Pen  sketches  of  the  better  class. 

BIOGRAPHY 

Brawley,    Benjamin.     Women   of   achievement.    92p.    Woman's 
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A  review  of  the  achievements  of  the  Negro  woman  in  American  life, 

with  special  accounts  of  five. 

Corrothers,  James  D.     In  spite    of    the    handicap.     An    auto 
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A  picture  of   what   race  prejudice   means   in   the   north,  and  the   prob 
lems   which  confront  the   abler   and   more   intelligent    Negroes. 

Johnson,  James  Weldon.    Autobiography  of  an  ex-colored  man. 
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Mather,  Frank  Lincoln.  Ed.     Who's  who  of  the  colored  race. 
296?.     Editor,  5052  Cottage  Grove  Ave.    Chicago.     1915. 

Moton,    Robert    Russa.      Finding    a    way    out.      295p.      $2.50. 
Doubleday,   Page  &  Co.,   Garden   City,   N.Y.     1920. 

National  Cyclopedia  of    the    Colored    race.     Clement    Richard 
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Mainly  biographical,  but  contains  historical  and  statistical  section. 


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American  Journal  of  Sociology.  9:593-611.  Mr.  '04.  Psychol 
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The  heart   of  the  race  problem   is  the  attempt  to  keep  the  Negro  in 
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claim   to  social  and  economic  justice. 


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AMALGAMATION 

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gar  Gardner  Murphy. 

South  Atlantic  Quarterly.  16:14-20.  Ja.  '17.  Education  and 
crime  among  Negroes.  Gilbert  T.  Stephenson. 

South  Atlantic  Quarterly.  18:116-24.  Ap.  '19.  Educational 
values  in  schools  for  Negroes.  Stuart  Grayson  Noble. 

United  States.  Bureau  of  Education.  Bui.  1916,  nos.  38  and  39. 
Negro  Education.  $i  and  $1.25.  Supt.  of  doc. 

United  States.  Bureau  of  Education.  Bui.  1919,  no.  27.  Re 
cent  progress  in  Negro  education.  Thomas  Jesse  Jones. 
i6p.  5c.  Supt.  of  doc. 

*Weekly  Review.  3:52-3.  Jl.  14,  '20.  Progress  in  the  educa 
tion  of  the  Negro.  James  Z.  Gregg. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  xxv 

LYNCHING 

American  Law  Review.    44:200-20.    Mr. '10.    Lynching.    Charles 

C.   Butler. 

History,    extent    and    remedies. 
Blackwood's    Magazine.      181 : 48-60.     Ja.    '07.      "But    for    the 

Grace  of  God — ."  John  Marvyn. 

One   man's   justification   of   lynching. 
Collins,   Winfield  H.    Truth  about  lynching  and  the  Negro  in 

the  South.    163?.    Neale  Pub.  Co.  New  York.    1918. 

Practically    an    extenuation    of    lynching.      The   author    pleads    that    the 
South  be  made  safe  for  the  white  people. 

International   Quarterly.    8:199-208.     S.    '03.    Lynching.    Joseph 
B.   Bishop. 
Menace   of   lynching  spirit. 

Nation.    103:173-4.    Ag.  24,  '16.    Casuistry  of  lynch  law.    Her 
bert  J.  Stewart. 
Refutes   defences   of   lynching. 

Nation.     108:438-9.     Je.    14,   '19.     Protecting  southern   woman 
hood.    Herbert  J.   Seligmann. 
Author   shows    "protection    of   southern    womanhood"    is   a   mere   phrase 

used  to  justify  violence    committed  by   reason  of   intense   racial   animosity. 

Editorial   comment,   p.    931    "The   Negro  at  bay." 

National  Association  for  the  Advancement  of  Colored  People. 
Thirty  years  of  lynching  in  the  United  States.  I05p.  50C. 
70  Fifth  Ave.,  New  York.  1919. 

North  American  Review.  178:33-48.  Ja.  '04.  Lynching  of  Ne 
groes — its  cause  and  its  prevention.  Thomas  Nelson  Page. 
Negroes  must  be  held  accountable  for  the  good  order  of  their  race. 

A  conservative  white  man's  view. 

*South  Atlantic  Quarterly.  6:125-34.  Ap.  '07.  Practice  of 
lynching  in  the  United  States.  James  Elbert  Cutler. 

South    Atlantic    Quarterly.     18:191-6.     Jl.    '19.     South   and    the 
lynching  evil.    Robert   R.    Moton. 
Urges   constructive  effort   against   lynching. 

RACE  RIOTS 

*American  City.  21  :  248-51.  S.  '19.  Gunpowder  of  race  antag 
onism.  Mary  White  Ovington. 

*Current  Opinion.  67:154-5.  S.  '19.  What  is  behind  the  Ne 
gro  uprisings?  Herbert  J.  Seligmann. 

*Journal  of   Criminal  Law    and    Criminology.     11:127-31.    My 
'20.     Lynching  an  evil  of  county  government. 
W.   E.  Wimpy,  in  Manufacturer's  Record,  Aug.   24,   1916. 


xxvi  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

*Lynching:  a  national  menace.  James  E.  Gregg,  and  others 
i7p.  Hampton  Institute,  Hampton,  Va. 

Nation.    19:173.    Ag.  9,  '19.    Washington  riots. 

Human    side   of   the   Negroes   during  the   race   riot   at   Washington,   as 
seen  by  a  white  woman. 

*North  American  Review.  178:853-68.  Je.  '04.  Lynching  from 
a  Negro's  point  of  view.  Mary  Church  Terrell. 

North  American  Review.  210 : 436-8.  O.  '19.  Our  own  race 
war. 

States  racial  conflict  is  the  natural  outcome  of  causes  foreseen  in  1785 
by  the  New  York  Council   of  Revision. 

Public.    22 : 848-9.    Ag.  9,  '19.    What  Negroes  think  of  the  race 

riots.    George  E.  Haynes. 
Sandburg,    Carl.      Chicago    race   riots.     7ip.     Harcourt,    Brace 

and  Howe.    W.  47  St.,  New  York.  1919. 
Survey.    38:331-3.    Jl.  14,  '17.     East  St.  Louis  pogrom.     Oscar 

Leonard. 

*Survey.  42 :  697-9.  Ag.  9,  '19.  Race  riots  in  relation  to  democ 
racy.  George  E.  Haynes. 

World  Today.    11:1169-75.    N.    '06.    Tragedy  at  Atlanta.    John 
Temple   Graves,  and  W.   E.   Burghardt  DuBois. 
Contrasts  the  white  and  Negro  point  of  view. 

PEONAGE 

*Challenge  Magazine.  3:17-22.  Je.  '21.  Economic  interpreta 
tion  of  peonage. 

Independent.  56:409-14.  F.  25,  '04.  New  slavery  in  the  south 
— an  autobiography.  By  a  Georgia  Negro  peon. 

*New   Republic.     26 : 223-4.     Ap.  20,  '21.     Fruits  of  peonage. 

Nineteenth  Century.  46 :  957-73-  D.  '99.  Negro  on  the  position 
of  the  Negro  in  America.  D.  E.  Tobias. 

Survey.  46:43-4.  Ap.  9,  '21.  Peonage  and  the  public.  Hast 
ings  H.  Hart. 

NEGRO  IN  THE  SOUTH 

American  Statistical  Association  Publications.  13 :65~7o.  Mr. 
'12.  Southern  agriculture  and  the  Negro  farmer.  H.  B. 
Frissell. 

Discussion   of  Dr.    Coulter's  paper   on   "The   Rural   South,"   Washing 
ton,  D.C.  Dec.  28,   191 1. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  xxvii 

Evans,  Maurice  S.    Black  and  white    in    the    Southern    states. 
299p.     Longmans,  Green  &  Co.    New  York.    1915. 

Observations  of  a  white  South  African  travelling  through  the  Southern 
states.     An  able  and  unbiased  study.     Review:  Journal  of  Political  Econ 
omy.     24:304-6.     Mr.   '16 
Graham,   Stephen.     Soul   of  John   Brown.    33ip.    $3.    Macmil- 

lan  Co.   New  York.    1920. 

An  English  journalist's  study  of  the  Negro  problem  by  a  tour   through 
the    black    states.      Stresses    the    vital    importance    of    improving    race    rela 
tions.     Also  published  by  Macmillan,  London,  under  title  "Children  of  the 
Slaves." 
*Hammond,   L.   H.    In  black  and  white;   an  interpretation  of 

southern    life.     244?.     Fleming    H.    Revell    Co.     New   York. 

1914. 

Sociological   aspects. 
Hammond,   L.   H.     Southern    women    and    racial    adjustment. 

32p.    Trustees  o£  the  John  Slater  Fund.  Occasional  papers, 

no.    19.    1917. 

What  the  Southern  white  women  are  doing  for  the  black  woman. 
*Hart,   Albert   Bushnell.    Southern   South.    445p.    D.   Appleton 

&  Co.  New  York.    1910. 
Independent.     72:196-200.    Ja.  25,    '12.     More    slavery    at    the 

south. 

Virtual   enslavement   of   Negro   women   by   low   wages    and   inescapable 
conditions,    as   told  by   a   colored  nurse. 

^National  Conference  of   Charities  and  Correction.    1914:121-7. 

Rural  Negro  and  the  South.     Booker  T.  Washington. 
National  Conference  of  Social  Work.    1917:273-6.    Negro  and 

the  new   economic  conditions.    R.   R.   Moton. 
Patterson,  Raymond.    Negro  and  his  needs.    2i2p.    Fleming  H. 

Revell  Co.   New  York.    1911. 
Waring,    Robert   L.      As    we    see   it.     233?.      C.    F.    Sudwarth. 

Washington,    D.C.     1910. 

Negroes   who    have   done    something,   and   the   white  "crackers"   of   the 
South. 

Woofter,  Thomas  Jackson,  Jr.    Negro  migration.    195?.    W.  D. 
Gray.      106   7th   Ave.,    New   York.      1920. 
Changes   in   rural   organization   and  population   of   the  cotton  belt. 

NEGRO  IN  THE  NORTH 
*Daniels,  John.    In  freedom's  birthplace;  a  study  of  the  Boston 

Negroes.     496p.     Houghton,   Mifflin  Co.,  Boston.     1914. 
Epstein,   Abraham.     Negro    migrant    in    Pittsburgh.    74p.    50c. 

School  of   Economics,  University  of   Pittsburgh.    1918. 


xxviii  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

National  Conference  of  Social  Work.  1917:497-503.  Program 
of  work  for  the  assimilation  of  Negro  immigrants  in 
northern  cities.  Forrester  B.  Washington. 

Ovington,  Mary  White.  Half  a  man:  the  status  of  the  Ne 
gro  in  New  York.  236?.  Longmans,  Green  &  Co.  New 
York.  1911. 

Wood,  Junius  B.  Negro  in  Chicago.  3ip.  IDC.  Daily  News, 
Chicago.  D.  1916. 

World  Outlook.  5:   O.  '19.    Negro  in  the  north.     Whole  num 
ber. 
*Way  to  racial  peace,  George  E.  Haynes,  p.  3-4. 

NEGRO  IN  INDUSTRY 

*Academy  of  Political  Science.    Proceedings.    8:299-312.     F.  '19. 

Effect  of  war  conditions  on  Negro  labor.    George  Edmund 

Haynes. 
Annals    of    the    American   Academy.    49:19-27.     S.    '13.     Negro 

in   unskilled   labor.    R.    R.   Wright,   Jr. 
Atlantic    Monthly.     111:756-67.     Je.    '13.     Negro    and    the    labor 

unions.    Booker  T.   Washington. 

^Industrial  Management.     58:75-6.     Jl.  '19.     Negro  and  his  op 
portunity.    Ralph  W.   Immel. 
International  Monthly.    2 :  672-86.    D.  'oo.     American  Negro  and 

his   economic  value.    Booker  T.   Washington. 
Literary   Digest.    61: 12.    Je.   28,   '19.     Negro   enters   the   labor- 
union. 
National   Conference  of  Social  Work.     1919:521-4.     Conditions 

in   industry  as   they  affect    Negro    women.     Helen    Brooks 

Irvin. 
Outlook.      106:893-6.      Ap.    25,    '14.      Eight   months    as    a    boss. 

.Samuel  A.  Derieux. 

Shows  human  side  of  Negroes. 
Survey.    45:420-1.    D.   18,  '20.    Negro  and  the  industrial  peace. 

T.   J.   Woofter,   Jr. 

Negroes   status  in   industry. 

MIGRATION 

Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  27:559-78.  My.  '06.  Mi 
gration  of  Negroes  to  the  North.  R.  R.  Wright,  Jr. 

Journal  of  Political  Economy.  25:1034-43.  D.  '17.  Interstate 
migration  of  Negro  population.  Wm.  O.  Scroggs. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  xxix 

Literary   Digest.    54:1914.    Je.   23,    '17.     South   calling   Negroes 

back. 

Symposium  of  sentiment  in  South  and  North. 
*Scott,    Emmet   J.     Negro    Migration    during  the   War.      189?. 

Carnegie  Endowment   for   International   Peace.     New  York. 

1920. 
Survey.     40:115-22;  41:455-61.     My.  4,  '18,  Ja.  4,  '19.  Negroes 

move  north.    George   Edmund  Haynes. 

i.     Extent  and  causes.     2.    Conditions  in  the  North. 
Survey.     43:183-5.     N.    29,    '19.     Why    southern    Negroes    don't 

go  South.     T.   Arnold  Hill. 

United  States.  Department  of  Labor.  Division  of  Negro  Eco 
nomics.  Negro  migration  in  1916-17.  Reports  by  R.  H. 

Leavell,  T.  R.  Snavely,  T.  J.  Woofter,  Jr.,  and  Francis  D. 

Tyson. 
Woodson,   Carter  Godwin.    Century  of   Negro  migration.    22ip. 

Association    for    the    Study    of    Negro    Life    and    History. 

Washington,   D.C.    1918. 

Bibliography,  p.   193-221. 

Migration   and  colonization  movements,   1815   to  date.     Also  deals  with 
the  Negro  in  the  North  during  the  slavery  period. 

NEGRO  SUFFRAGE 
General  References 

American  Political  Science  Review,  i  :  17-43.  N.  '06.  Negro 
suffrage:  the  constitutional  point  of  view.  John  C.  Rose. 

*  Annals  of  the  American  Academy.     49:93-104.   S.  '13.     Prob 

lems   of    citizenship.    Ray   Stannard   Baker. 

Education    and    evolutionary    influences    will    change    the    status    of    the 
Negro  as  a  voter. 

Atlantic  Monthly.    88  : 433-7.    O.   '01.     Reconstruction  and  dis- 
franchisement. 

*  Atlantic  Monthly.     88:437-49.  O.  '01.     Undoing  of  reconstruc 

tion.    William   A.   Dunning. 

Beard,  Charles  A.  Restoration  of  white  dominion  in  the 
South.  In  Contemporary  American  History,  p.  1-26.  Mac- 
millan  Co.  New  York.  1914. 

George,  James  Z.  Political  history  of  slavery  in  the  United 
States.  343p.  $3.  Neale  Pub.  co.  1915. 

Gunton's  Magazine.     27  : 453-62.    N.  '04.     Shall  we  have  a  six 
teenth   amendment? 
The  disfranchisement  of  the  Negro  requires  a  new  amendment  reappor- 

tioning   representation  to   Congress. 


xxx  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

^Hamilton,  James  Albert.     Negro    suffrage    and    congressional 
representation.     68p.     Winthrop  Press.     New  York.     1910. 
Bibliography,  p.  61-8. 

International   Monthly,    i  :34<>54.    Mr.  'oo.     Southern    question. 
Edward   P.   Clark. 
Struggle   for   control   of   the   ballot. 

Journal  of  Negro  History.  6:1-53.  Ja.  '21.  Fifty  years  of  Ne 
gro  citizenship  as  qualified  by  the  United  States  supreme 
court.  Carter  G.  Woodson. 

McClure's  Magazine.  22 :  259-75.  Ja.  '04.  Can  the  South  solve 
the  Negro  problem?  Carl  Schurz. 

Nation.     111:372-3.    O.   6,  '20.     Woman    voter    hits    the    color 
line.     William   Pickens. 
Obstructions   imposed   arbitrarily   in   the    way   of   colored   votes   in    the 

South. 

North  American  Review.  128 :  225-84.  Mr.  '79.  Ought  the  Ne 
gro  to  be  disfranchised?  Ought  he  to  have  been  enfran 
chised?  Symposium.  James  G.  Elaine  and  others. 

North  American  Review.  202:213-19.  Ag.  '15.  South  and  the 
Negro  vote.  James  C.  Hemphill. 

Political    Science    Quarterly.     9:671-703.     D.    "94.      History   of 
Negro   suffrage   in  the   South.    Stephen  B.  Weeks. 
1715-1894. 

*Porter,   Kirk    Harold.     History    of    suffrage    in    the    United 

States.    University  of   Chicago   Press.     1918. 
Ringwalt,   Ralph  Curtis.    Negro  suffrage.    In  Briefs  on  public 

questions,  p.    17-24.     Longmans,   Green  &   Co.     New  York. 

1905. 
Robbins,   E.   C.    Repeal    of    the    fifteenth    amendment    (Negro 

suffrage)  ;  brief.     In  High  School  Debate  Book.  p.   168-76. 

A.  C.  McClurg  &  Co.   Chicago.    1912. 

Bibliography,   p.    173-6. 

Rose,  J.  C.  Negro's  right  to  vote :  its  denial.  In  Jones,  Ches 
ter  Lloyd.  Readings  on  parties  and  elections  in  the  United 
States,  p.  244-50.  Macmillan  Co.  New  York.  1912. 

Smith,  W.  Roy.  Negro  suffrage  in  the  South.  In  Studies  in 
southern  history  and  politics,  p.  231-56.  Columbia  Univer 
sity  Press.  New  York.  1914. 

"Southern  Workman.  49:349-55.  Ag.  '20.  National  aspects  of 
the  Negro  problem.  Moorfield  Storey. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  xxxf 

Affirmative  References 

American  Political  Science  Association.  Proceedings.  1905: 
149-65.  Realities  of  Negro  suffrage.  Albert  Bushnell  Hart. 

*  Atlantic.  94:72-81.  Jl.  '04.  Why  disfranchisement  is  bad. 
Archibald  H.  Grimke. 

Atlantic.     106:612-19.  N.  '10.     Negro  suffrage  in  a  democracy. 
Ray  Stannard  Baker. 
Same    condensed.      Review    of    Reviews.     42:724-5.     D.    '10. 

*Grimke,  Archibald  H.  Ballotless  victim  of  one-party  govern 
ments.  American  Negro  Academy.  Occasional  papers  no. 
16.  i8p.  Washington.  1913. 

Independent.  55 :  2021-4.  Ag.  27,  '03.  Enfranchisement  of  the 
Negro  no  blunder.  J.  W.  Hood. 

Nineteenth  Century.  68:285-302.  Ag.  '10.  American  Negro  as 
a  political  factor.  Kelly  Miller. 

Outlook.     123:52,  56.     S.  10,  '19.     War  and  race  feeling.     E.  E. 
Miller. 
The  more  intelligent  of  the  Negroes  should  have  a  vote. 

Straker,  D.  Augustus.     Negro  suffrage  in  the  South.    47p.    Au 
thor.     29  State  St.,   Detroit,  Mich. 
A  colored  lawyer's  defense  of  Negro  suffrage. 

Negative  References 

Adriaans,  J.  H.    Has  a  Negro  the  right  to  vote?  26p.  Author. 

406  6th    St.,    N.W.,   Washington,    D.C.     1908. 

Subtitle:  The  validity  of  the  i4th  amendment  to  the  U.S.  Constitution 
denied. 

*Arena.  31 :  481-8.  My.  '04.  Has  the  fifteenth  amendment  been 
justified?  James  E.  Boyle. 

Forum.    5 :383-95.     Je.    '88.     What    Negro    supremacy    means. 
Wade  Hampton. 
South   Carolina  under  Negro  rule  from    1868   to    1876. 

Forum.     14 :  797-804.     F.   '93.     Negro  suffrage   a  failure :   shall 
we  abolish  it?    John  C.  Wickliffe. 
Suggests  repeal  of  isth  amendment. 

Fry,  Henry  Peck.    Voice  of  the    third    generation.     32p.    250. 
Author.     Chattanooga,  Tenn. 
Strongly  biased  against  the   Negro. 

Gunton's  Magazine.  25 : 95-101.  Ag.  '03.  Suffrage  and  repre 
sentation. 

Harvard  Law  Review.    26:42-63.     N.  '12.    Latest  phase  of  Ne 
gro  disfranchisement.    Julien  C.  Monnet. 
Holds  the  evasions  of  the  Southern  States  are  justified. 


xxxii  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Independent.    60:151-4.    Ja.   18,  '06.    Southern  representation  in 

Congress.    Sydney  J.    Bowie. 

Objections   to   the   reduction    of    representation. 
Institute  of   Social  Economics.     Lecture   Bulletin.     6 :  203-22.  F. 

16,  '03.    Is  Negro  suffrage  a  failure?    George  Gunton. 

Negro   suffrage   a   failure    from    every    aspect. 

North  American  Review.     154:401-13.     Ap.  '92.     Southerner  on 
the   Negro   question.     Thomas    Nelson   Page. 
Opposed  to  suffrage. 

North    American    Review.      175:534-43.     O.    '02.      Suffrage    re 
striction  in  the   South;   its   causes  and   consequences.     Clar 
ence  H.   Poe. 
Opposed   to   federal   interference. 

Scribner's   Magazine.    36:15-24.    Jl.    '04.     Disfranchisement    of 
the   Negro.    Thomas   Nelson   Page. 
Represents  the  conservative  Southern  view. 

RACE  SEPARATION 
Segregation 

*  Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  49 :  105-19.  S.  '13.  Con 
ditions  among  Negroes  in  the  cities.  George  Edmund 
Haynes. 

Century.  79:390-400.  Ja.  '10.  Pioneers  of  Mound  Bayou.  Hi 
ram  Tong. 

A  successful  and  exclusive   Negro  village  and  colony  in    Mississippi. 
*Hibbert  Journal.     13 :  867-86.     Jl.  '15.     Race  segregation  in  the 

United   States.    Philip   Alexander   Bruce. 
*McClure.     33 :  324-38.   Jl.   '09.     Black  and  white   in   the   South. 

William  Archer. 
Nation.     85 : 98-9.  Ag.    i,  '07.     Separate  cars.     F.   D.  Minor. 

Justifies   segregation   on   railway  cars. 

National  Municipal  Review.  3 : 496-504.  Jl.  '14.  Segregation 
of  the  white  and  Negro  races  in  cities  by  legislation.  Gil 
bert  T.  Stephenson. 

^National  Municipal  Review.     8:104-5.  Ja.  '19.     Unconstitution 
ally  of   Negro   segregation.    John   C.   Rose. 
Also   in    South   Atlantic   Quarterly.      13:1-18.     Ja.    '14. 

New    Republic.      5:88-90.      N.    27,    '15.      Isolating    the    Negro. 

Louis  B.  Wehle. 
*New  Republic.    5:113-14.    D.  4,   '15.    My  view  of   segregation 

laws.    Booker  T.  Washington. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  xxxlii 

New  Republic.    6:176-8.    Mr.  18,  '16.    Negro  segregation  in  St. 

Louis.    Roland   G.   Usher. 

New   Republic.     13 1345-6.    Ja.    19,   '18.    Unconstitutional   segre 
gation.    W.  H.  Baldwin,  Jr. 
*North   American   Review.     198:800-7.   D.   '13.     President   and 

the  segregation  at  Washington.    Oswald  Garrison  Villard. 
Outlook.     122:604-6.    Ag.  20,  '19.    What  does  the  Negro  want? 

R.  H.  Leavell. 
South   Atlantic   Quarterly.     13:107-17.    Ap.   '14.    Segregation  of 

the  white  and  Negro   races  in  rural  communities  of  North 

Carolina.    Gilbert  T.   Stephenson. 
*South    Atlantic    Quarterly.      13:207-12.      Jl.    '14.      Rural    land 

segregation  between  whites  and  Negroes.    Clarence  Poe. 

A   reply   to   Mr.    Stephenson   in  South  Atlantic   Quarterly   for  April. 
Survey.    33:375-7.    Ja.  2,  '15.     Race    segregation    in    the    rural 

South.     W.   D.  Weatherford. 

Colonisation 

*Arena.     40 : 62-5.  Jl.  '08.     Future  of  the   Negro.     Wallace  B. 
Conant. 

Fleming,  Walter  L.     Deportation  and  colonization.    In  Studies 
in  southern  history  and  politics,  p.  3-30.    Columbia  Univer 
sity  Press.     New  York.     1914. 
*Same.    Journal    of   American   History.     4:197-213.     Ap.    '10.     Historic 

attempts   to   solve  the  race  problem  by   deportation. 

Forum.    27:114-19.    Mr.  '99.    Negro  and    African    colonization. 
O.   F.   Cook. 
African   colonization  under  right  protection. 

Johns    Hopkins    University    Studies.     37:321-543.     1919.     Amer 
ican  Colonization  Society  1817-1840.     Early  Lee  Fox. 

Journal  of  Negro  History.     1 :  276-301.  Jl.  '16.     Attitude  of  the 
free  Negro  toward  African    colonization.    Louis    R.    Mehl- 
inger. 
Opposition   to    American   colonization   society   projects. 

Literary  Digest.     48:644+.     Mr.  21,  '14.     Chief   Sam  and  the 
Negro  exodus. 
Back   to  Africa  movement  of  Kansas  and   Oklahoma   Negroes. 

Living  Age.     265 :  771-8.     Je.  25,   '10.     Liberia  and  the  powers. 
E.   D.   Morel. 
Favors  a  protectorate  over  Liberia,   alleging  its  failure. 

*Survey.    39:141.    N.    10,    '17.     Negro's    fatherland.    W.  E.   B. 
DuBois. 


xxxiv  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

*World's  Work.  41 : 264-70.  Ja.  '21.  Garvey's  Empire  of  Ethio 
pia.  T.  H.  Talley. 

SOLUTION 
Books,  Pamphlets  and  Documents 

*Burkholder,  William.  Practical  application  of  Christianity  to 
the  American  race  problems.  Kansas  University  News-Bul 
letin.  14:  no.  5.  p.  35-58. 

Duvall,  C.  H.  Building  of  a  race.  63?.  4OC.  Everett  Print. 
Boston.  1919. 

Race  unity  and  strengthening  of  racial  type  as  essentials  for  the  future 
of  the  race. 

Eggleston,  Edward.  Ultimate  solution  of  the  Negro  problem. 
285?.  Richard  G.  Badger,  The  Gorham  Press.  Boston.  1913. 
Natural  elimination  by  the  survival  of  the  fittest. 

Royce,  Josiah.  Race  questions  and  prejudices.  In  Race  ques 
tions,  provincialism,  and  other  American  problems,  p.  1-53. 
Macmillan  Co.  New  York.  1908. 

Shaler,  Nathaniel  S.  Problem  of  the  African.  In  Neighbor : 
the  natural  history  of  human  contacts,  p.  126-91.  Hough- 
ton,  Mifflin  Co.  Boston.  1904. 

Stoddard,  Lothrop.    Rising  tide  of  color.    3iop.  Charles  Scrib- 
ner's   Sons.    New  York.    1920. 
Modifications   of   existing   world   race   relationships. 

Townsend,   Meredith.     Future  of  the  Negro,   and,   The   Negro 
problem  in  America.     In  Asia  and  Europe,  p.  354-69.    G.  P. 
Putnam's   Sons.     New   York.     1904. 
Holds  the   Negroes  will  remain  an  inferior  race. 

Washington,  Booker  T.  Future  of  the  American  Negro.  244p. 
Small,  Maynard  &  Co.  Boston.  1899. 

Periodical  References 

American  Anthropologist.     21 :  410-20.     O.  '19.     Future  of  the 

American  Negro.    George  S.  Painter. 

Argues  that  adaptation,  amalgamation,  natural  selection  and  environment 
all  tend  to  produce  a  lighter  race  and  eliminate  the  extremes  of  color 
demarcation. 

American  Journal   of   Sociology.    7 :539~56.    Ja.   '02.    Social   as 
similation.    Sarah   E.    Simons. 
Negroes,    p.    542-8. 

Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  49:47-57.  S.  '13.  Work  of 
the  commission  of  southern  universities  on  the  race  ques 
tion.  Charles  Hillman  Brough. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  xxxv 

*  Annals  of  the  American  Academy.     49 :  67-73.     S.  '13.     White 

man's  debt  to  the  Negro.    L.  H.  Hammond. 

*Arena.  36:364-9.  O.  '06.  Object  lesson  in  the  solution  of  race 
problems.  Frank  Jewett  Mather. 

Atlantic  Monthly.  103:536-42.  Ap.  '09.  Ultimate  race  prob 
lem.  Kelly  Miller. 

Century.  73 : 961-2.  Ap.  '07.  Where  the  race  problem  has 
solved  itself.  Eliza  Frances  Andrews. 

^Eclectic  Magazine.  147:387-93.  N.  '06.  Negro  problem:  a 
southern  view.  Stanhope  Sams. 

*  Forensic   Quarterly.     1:145-77.   Je.    '10.    Proposed   solutions   of 

the  race  problem.    Charles  Breckenridge  Wilmer. 
National    Education     Association.       Proceedings.       1900:114-23. 

Problem   of   the   South.     Booker  T.   Washington. 
North  American  Review.     188:50-61.    Jl.  '08.    Outcome  of  the 

southern   race  question.    Albert   Bushnell   Hart. 

Discusses    fusion,    race   separation,    legislation,   violence,    vassalage,   and 
uplift.     Concludes    that   the  remedy   is   patience. 

North  American  Review.     200:661-2.  N.  '14.     Nature  solving  a 

race  problem. 

Census   statistics   showing   Negroes   are   proportionately   fewer   in   num 
bers. 

*Outlook.      123 : 44-5.    S.    10,   '19.     Race   problem. 

*Popular   Science    Monthly.     83 :368-74.    O.    '13.    Psychological 
factor   in   southern    race   problems.    James   Bardin. 
The  Negroes  will   evolve  upon  distinct  racial  lines. 

Public.  22:131-3.  F.  8,  '19.  Negro  and  national  reconstruc 
tion.  George  Edmund  Haynes. 

Sewanee  Review.  28:152-9.  Ap.  '20.  Outlook  for  the  Negro. 
Josiah  Morse. 

World's  Work.  (London).  15:237-43.     F.  '10.     Conflict  of  color. 
B.  L.   Putnam  Weale. 
The  black   menace   of  the   world,   a  possible  problem   of  the   future. 

*World's  Work.     32:232-6.  Je.   '16.  Gathering  clouds  along  the 

color  line.    Ray  Stannard  Baker. 
World's  Work.     41:153-66;   *264-70.     D.   '20,  Ja.   '21.     Marcus 

Garvey,   the  Negro   Moses?;    Garvey's   Empire  of   Ethiopia. 

Truman  Hughes  Talley. 


ORGANIZATIONS 

American   Negro  Academy.     Washington,   D.C. 

Armstrong  Association  of  Philadelphia.  Fourth  and  Chestnut 
Sts.,  Philadelphia. 

National  Association  for  the  Advancement  of  Colored  People. 
70  Fifth  Av.,  New  York. 

National  Urban  League.    127  E.  23rd  St.,  New  York. 

Universal  Negro  Improvement  Association  and  African  Com 
munities  League.  56  W.  I35th  St.,  New  York. 

University  Commission  on  Southern  Race  Questions.  J.  J.  Doster, 
University  of  Alabama. 

Periodicals 

Challenge  Magazine.     2305  Seventh  Av.,  New  York. 
Crisis.    Published  by  National  Association  for  the  Advancement 

of  Colored  People.     70  Fifth  Av.,  New  York. 
Half-Century  Magazine.     Half-Century  Co.,  Inc.     5202  Wabash 

Av.,  Chicago,  111. 

Journal  of  Negro  History.  1216  You  St.  N.W.,  Washington,  D.C. 
Messenger.  Messenger  Pub.  Co.  2305  Seventh  Av.,  New  York. 
National  Urban  League  Bulletin.  127  E.  23rd  St.,  New  York. 
Southern  Workman.  Hampton  Normal  and  Industrial  Institute, 

Hampton,  Va. 
Tuskegee   Student.     Tuskegee   Institute,   Tuskegee,  Ala. 


SELECTED  ARTICLES  ON 
THE   NEGRO   PROBLEM 

INTRODUCTION 

A  human  relationship  is  ever  a  matter  of  great  interest.  In 
the  race  problem  of  our  country  we  have  the  drama  of  ten 
million  souls  being  led  along  a  way  they  know  not,  aspiring, 
toiling,  many  feeling  the  heights  and  depths  of  existence  in  their 
race  life,  thwarted  and  helped,  hopeful  and  despairing,  held  down 
by  prejudice  or  uplifted  by  Brotherhood,  played  upon  by  resig 
nation  and  resentment,  pride  and  hate,  as  race  was  not  often 
played  upon  before.  It  is  not  the  less  real  that,  absorbed  in 
problems  of  our  own,  we  so  often  ignore  its  very  presence, 
until  some  crisis  or  conflict,  that  shames  our  civilization,  brings 
it  to  our  passing  and  often  uncomprehending  attention.  Un 
comprehending  since  we  have  seldom  tried  to  realize  the  deeper 
meanings  of  the  lives  of  our  black  brothers.  We  have  not  often 
concerned  ourselves  to  their  civilization  from  its  remote  past, 
their  status  and  capabilities  of  unfoldment  for  the  future;  on 
the  other  hand  we  have  often  let  momentary  expedience,  and 
narrow  views  and  fears,  injustice  and  wrong,  speak  for  us  for 
the  eternal  principles  of  right,  faith,  evolution,  justice  and 
humanity. 

The  race  problem  is  a  subtle,  intangible  part  of  our  national 
life.  It  takes  many  forms.  Fundamentally  it  is  expressed  by 
the  question,  in  individual  cases,  What  is  the  right  relation  of 
this  man  to  myself?  And  in  the  national  mind,  What  is  the 
relation  of  my  race  to  this  other,  and  what  its  place  in  our 
country?  The  race  problem  is  the  attempt  of  many  individuals 
and  groups  in  many  localities  to  answer  these  questions  for 
themselves,  each  according  to  his  light.  And  in  the  answers 
we  have  all  the  forms  of  antipathies  and  kindliness,  social 
harmony  and  stress,  outbreaks  of  violence  and  oppressions, 
propagandas  and  upliftments. 

It  is  not  a  unique  problem  to  find  friction  between  two  races 


4  '  SELECTED  ARTJqLES 

living  side  by  side,  as  in  America.  We  likewise  find  it  wherever 
two  races  come  into  conflict,  striving,  the  one  to  maintain  mastery, 
the  other  for  rights.  It  is  peculiar  in  that  theoretically  and 
constitutionally  the  races  are  presumed  to  be  politically  and 
civilly  equal,  which  is  denied  in  actual  fact. 

The  history  of  the  Negro  race  in  our  country  is  familiar  to 
most  readers.  His  first  appearance  in  the  English  colonies  was 
in  1619.  In  1662  sanction  was  given  by  statutory  law  to  slavery. 
We  note  other  salient  points,  his  early  practical  concentration 
in  the  Southern  states,  his  period  of  development  during  slavery, 
the  contest  for  emancipation,  the  readjustments  of  Reconstruc 
tion  with  its  period  of  carpet-baggers,  Freedman's  Bureau, 
political  abuse  and  social  fears,  the  gradual  deprivation  of 
rights,  growth  of  race  separation  and  prejudice  lasting  to  our 
day,  and  the  Negro's  steady  growth  in  the  last  decades  in 
material  progress  and  self-help.  Du  Bois  has  estimated  possibly 
ten  million  Negroes  expatriated  in  the  total  American  slave 
trade  from  the  sixteenth  to  the  nineteenth  centuries  inclusive,  or, 
counting  the  loss  of  life  incident  to  the  translation,  a  total  of 
sixty  million.  • 

The  long  period  of  Negro  slavery  and  his  position  in  our 
country  accentuates  a  tendency  to  accord  him  a  place  as  an/ 
inferior  being.  That  the  Negro  race  is  below  the  development  1 
of  the  white  seems  borne  out  by  anthropological,  biological  V 
and  ethnological  studies.  Authorities  differ,  however,  in  the 
exact  status  imputed  to  the  race.  The  fairest  thought  seems  to 
be  that  the  inferiority  is  much  less  than  is  supposed.  Allowing 
for  wide  variations  within  the  race  type,  for  the  different  levels 
of  race  stocks  from  which  he  is  sprung,  and  the  inadequacy  so 
far  of  the  desired  environmental  advantages,  there  is  perhaps 
some  reason  both  for  the  evaluations  of  his  critics  who  persist 
in  regarding  him  as  still  near  the  barbaric  type,  and  those  of 
his  friends  who  see  his  finest  and  best  capacities.  Another 
point  of  view  has  been  suggested,  seeing  races  not  as  necessarily 
superior  and  inferior,  but  at  different  stages,  older  and  younger, 
rising  in  one  era  of  civilization  and  being  eclipsed  in  another, 
representing  the  development  of  different  characteristics  according 
to  need  and  to  period,  capable  as  individuals  of  progressing  as 
fast  as  their  consciousness  is  evolved.  It  may  be  well  before 
a  wholesale  criticism  of  the  Negro  as  a  race  is  attempted  to 
consider  not  alone  the  physical,  but  the  spiritual  places  of  races 


THE   NEGRO   PROBLEM  5 

in  our  universe.  One  writer  practically  states  there  will  persist 
inability  to  really  understand  the  Negro  race,  its  arrestment  of 
development,  etc.,  until  we  can  accept  the  evolution  of  the  soul. 

The  problems  connected  with  the  race  situation  differ 
according  to  locality.  In  the  Southern  States  they  are  an 
evolution  from  slavery  days  and  the  era  of  Reconstruction. 
The  more  acute  aspects  are  perhaps  lynching,  "Jim  Crowism," 
the  denial  by  one  means  or  another  of  suffrage,  insufficient 
educational  provisions,  and  the  evils  connected  with  tenancy  and 
the  criminal  system.  There  is,  too,  a  prevailing  and  exasperating 
"cock-sureness"  of  Southern  opinion  of  the  Negro — a  view,  let 
us  say  frankly,  narrow  and  intolerant  in  certain  phases,  and  yet 
frequently  sympathetic.  The  Negro  is  "made  to  know  his 
place."  The  poor  and  ignorant  white  is  his  economic  com 
petitor,  and  sometimes  also  his  prejudiced  critic  and  opposer. 
He  is  violently  opposed,  also,  by  politicians  of  a  certain  type, 
and  by  writers  of  the  old  school  such  as  Dixon,  whose  novels  are 
built  on  the  perpetuation  of  Reconstruction  ideas  and  wrongs. 
The  practice  of  lynching  on  the  flimsiest  pretenses  gives  in 
stability  to  life ;  "Jim  Crowism"  and  practical  social  ostracism 
from  any  but  their  own  race  is  felt  as  a  constant  insult  to  the 
better  and  more  cultured  class  of  Negroes — a  barrier  no  personal 
worth  will  wear  down. 

The  suffrage  question  is  involved  with  the  practical  nullifying 
of  the  federal  amendment  by  various  state  constitutional  practices, 
such  as  the  illiteracy,  property  and  taxpaying  qualifications, 
grandfather  clauses  (declared  unconstitutional  in  1915).  and 
denial  by  direct  or  indirect  fraud  and  intimidation  where  neces 
sary.  It  comprises  also  the  question  of  the  justification  and 
right  of  the  Negro  to  the  ballot.  There  is  in  this  rather  more  of 
a  tendency  to  draw  upon  historical  experience  and  opinion, 
especially  of  the  ill-fated  Reconstruction  period,  than  to  air  the 
question  primarily  in  the  light  of  present  day  facts.  Finally,  it 
is 'held  to  involve  consideration  of  Southern  representation  in 
Congress,  and  the  effect  of  the  democratic  "solid  South"  main 
tained  as  a  defense  against  Negro  dominance  from  Recon 
struction. 

In  the  problem  of  education  several  facts  are  prominent.  One 
is  an  existing,  though  not  universal,  prejudice  against  educating 
the  Negro  for  fear  of  spoiling  him  for  his  allotted  position  as  a 
laborer.  Especially  is  there  a  prejudice  toward  higher  education. 


6  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

To  many  Southerners  the  "airs"  of  an  educated  Negro  are  intol 
erable.  The  best  opinion  favors  giving  him  every  opportunity 
for  betterment,  but  there  are  those  who  try  to  prove  the  Negro 
is  mentally  inferior  and  incapable  of  benefiting  by  higher  educa 
tion,  and  who  would  limit  his  opportunities  to  the  lower  schools. 
Needless  to  say  the  higher  white  institutions  of  the  South  are 
closed  to  him.  In  the  North  he  is  admitted  to  the  higher  insti 
tutions  to  a  limited  degree  on  equal  terms;  so  also  in  the  public 
schools  of  the  North  where  the  numbers  of  Negroes  are  generally 
small.  Industrial  education,  despised  at  first  by  him,  but  later 
so  widely  established,  in  particular  through  the  efforts  of  Booker 
T.  Washington,  has  won  the  acceptance  and  approval,  in  large 
measure,  of  both  the  white  race  and  the  black,  and  bids  fair  to 
prove,  in  the  sure  lifting  of  his  economic  status,  a  not  incon 
siderable  lever  toward  the  enlargement  of  opportunity  and  the 
uplifting  of  the  race.  Another  educational  problem  to  be  con 
sidered  is  the  limited  funds  available  for  education  in  the  South. 
It  is  contended  that  there  is  not  enough  as  yet  for  a  fair  education 
of  the  Southern  whites.  The  division  of  funds  for  separate 
schools  for  white  children  and  for  black,  leaves  a  wide  discrimi 
nation  against  the  Negro  child.  The  whites  frequently  can  and 
do  send  their  children  to  private  schools.  To  the  Negro  such 
recourse  is  usually  closed.  They  are  thrown  largely  upon  self- 
help,  and  such  northern,  philanthropic,  and  other  aid  as  is  ob 
tainable.  The  Negro's  detractors  advocate  a  division  of  school 
funds  according  to  taxes  contributed  by  each  race.  The  Negroes 
point  out  that  while  their  direct  contribution  to  taxes  may  appear 
to  lend  color  to  the  charge  that  the  whites  are  subsidized  for 
their  education,  yet  their  indirect  contribution  to  taxes  more  than 
covers  their  educational  outlay.  On  the  other  hand,  Federal  aid 
to  education  in  the  South  has  many  advocates  who  see  in  that  a 
means  of  giving  the  race  the  opportunity  that  is  justly  due. 

The  problems  in  the  North  are  more  in  the  formative  stage. 
Their  manifestations  are  especially  apparent  in  housing  difficul 
ties,  economic  competition,  race  riots,  and  in  the  more 
limited  and  erratic  expressions  of  discrimination.  The  general 
tendency  in  the  North  has  been  to  ignore  the  problem  except 
where  the  Negro  has  come  in  considerable  numbers,  or  where 
his  presence  depreciates  the  value  of  residential  property  or 
he  is  used  to  underbid  labor.  The  fairly  recent  migration 
North,  beginning  in  1916,  had  the  effect  of  accentuating  racial 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  7 

tension  in  this  section,   especially  in  centers  where  the  Negro 
came  to  be  present  in  large  numbers. 

Separation  of  the  races  in  one  form  or  another  has  long  had 
hold  upon  men's  minds  as  a  means  of  eliminating  to  some 
degree  the  recurring  manifestations  of  racial  conflict.  Occu 
pational  segregation,  separation  in  transportation,  public  accom 
modations,  governmental  departments  and  school,  residential  or 
community  segregation,  to  the  extreme  of  race  separation  by 
home  or  foreign  colonization,  are  some  of  the  ways  proposed 
or  temporarily  effected.  Residential  segregation  first  came  to 
be  an  issue  in  191 1  when  Richmond,  Va.  passed  a  segregation 
ordinance,  its  example  being  followed  by  a  number  of  other 
cities  until  the  United  States  Supreme  Court  in  1917  declared  it 
unconstitutional.  Although  no  longer  constitutional  under  law, 
there  are  still  organized  attempts  and  social  compulsion  to  keep 
the  Negroes  out  of  certain  neighborhoods.  It  seems  apparent 
that  the  social  stigma  and  inferior  conditions  of  living  are  the 
principal  hardships  here.  The  Negroes  have  been  content,  in 
many  instances,  to  carry  out  segregation  of  their  own  volition, 
as  indicated  by  towns  such  as  Mound  Bayou,  Miss. ;  Buxton, 
Iowa ;  Balor,  Okla. ;  Brooklyn,  111. ;  Plateau,  Ala. ;  Petersburg, 
Md. ;  Boley,  Indian  Territory;  Long,  Ohio;  Titusville,  and 
Gouldtown.  An  opposite  extreme  is  instanced  in  Syracuse, 
Ohio,  where  it  is  j^p^orted  no  Negro  may  remain  over  night. 
Segregation  has  difficulties  controversial  and  practical.  Except 
by  mutual  consent  or  social  compulsion  it  can  seldom  be  en 
forced.  Such  arbitrary  separation  and  discrimination  has  the 
effect  of  further  stirring  up  racial  animosity,  rather  than  quelling 
it.  Wholesale  deportation  by  colonization,  which  has  been 
thought  upon  since  the  slavery  era  and  has  had  some  notable 
advocates,  is  held  both  feasible  and  unfeasible  by  its  supporters 
and  critics.  But  except  for  the  Garvey  movement  it  does  not 
appear  to  have  much  hold  at  present  as  a  practical  remedy. 

There  are  two  minds  among  commentators  as  to  the  original 
bringing  of  the  Negro  to  America.  Many  people  look  upon  it  as 
an  unfortunate  circumstance,  or  worse.  Among  these  are 
included  many  Negroes  who  feel  that  the  race  should  be  recol- 
onized  in  an  African  home  where  it  can  secure  opportunity  and 
development  denied  it  here.  Others,  including  the  late  Booker 
T.  Washington,  have  pointed  out  that  the  Negro's  best  possible 
place  is  in  America.  These  acknowledge  that  the  swift  forcing 


8  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

of  a  backward  race  by  close  contact  with  our  developed  civiliza 
tion  has  done  it  immeasurable  good.  If  we  are  to  assume  that 
the  method  of  growth  of  the  Negro  race  has  been  to  have  its 
race  life  played  upon  strenuously  by  a  not  too  sympathetic 
civilization,  psychologically  first,  and  later  mentally,  its  growing 
mind  and  leadership  generating  a  greater  pride  and  power,  we 
can  readily  understand  that  it  must  feel  the  more  intensely 
that  its  problems  must  be  more  emphasised  by  the  very  fact 
of  this  reaction  and  growth.  The  opportunity  of  the  Negro 
was  the  more  quickly  to  find  itself,  that  of  the  white  race,  how 
ever  blunderingly,  to  help ;  and  the  white  race  has  not  been  an 
entirely  compassionate  teacher,  but  has  had  the  imperfections 
of  its  own  nature.  From  the  perspective  of  evolution  we  might 
see  in  the  story  of  interracial  relations  extenuating  circum 
stances;  and  might  ignore  for  the  moment  fortuitious  or  de 
liberate  wrongs  and  injustices  to  contemplate  rather  the  in 
spiration  of  a  racial  tide  of  life  moving  through  inevitable 
hindrances  and  shortcomings  to  its  own  best  good.  If  the  race 
was  given  its  best  opportunity  in  America,  however  dark  the 
pages  with  slavery,  crimes  and  prejudice,  it  must  in  the  main 
be  admitted  that  the  larger  purpose  has  been  fulfilled. 

The  European  War,  with  the  action  of  the  government  in 
drafting  the  Negroes  into  the  army,  and  the  meritorious  part 
played  by  their  regiments  "over  there"  added  a  circumstance 
to  their  psychological  growth  that  was  far-reaching.  To  them, 
as  to  many  of  the  white  people,  it  seemed  the  beginning  of  a  new 
era  in  their  repressed  and  troubled  race  life,  an  era  of  the  read 
justments  of  old  injustices  and  wrongs.  But  the  close  of  the 
war  was  marked  by  reactionary  feelings,  increased  lynchings 
and  race  riots,  the  Ku  Klux  revival,  pressure  in  Congress  for 
discriminatory  legislation,  threats  to  cut  off  certain  educational 
appropriations,  and  a  steadily  felt  change  of  sentiment  in  the 
North.  It  is  not  wholly  allaying  that  there  might  not  be  in 
reality,  heavy  pressure  or  menace  behind  these  sentiments. 
The  exaggeration  alone,  in  the  minds  of  those  who  feel  them, 
works  much  harm. 

The  Negro  has  a  separate  life  of  his  own  that  we  are  not 
generally  aware  of,  just  as  classes  within  our  own  race  have 
their  mutual  centers.  It  is  the  normal  way  of  growth,  but,  made 
too  exclusive,  it  is  the  way,  also,  of  unhealthy  self-centeredness 
and  agitation.  There  is  both  a  radical  and  a  conservative 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  9 

leadership.  The  Negro  is  finding  himself,  becoming  articulate, 
attaining  a  new  method  and  determination.  There  is  a  constant 
activity  of  the  press  and  platform,  national  and  international, 
congresses,  conferences,  conventions,  intra-racial  and  interracial. 
Sometimes  an  observer  realizes  the  rift  in  racial  relationship, 
its  difficulties,  and  growing  strength.  The  danger,  as  Stephen 
Graham  and  others  have  pointed  out,  is  that  our  non-realization 
and  indifference  to  the  problem  may  cover  the  smoldering 
resentment  until  too  late.  At  the  best  there  will  be  an  evolution 
of  mutual  forbearance  and  kindlier  feeling,  based  on  a  knowledge 
and  respect  for  the  needs  of  each  race.  At  the  worst  there  is 
the  menace  of  white  intolerance  pressed  too  far,  and  of  Negro 
retribution  and  hatred,  disastrous  to  both. 

The  theory  that  the  difficulties  between  the  races  might  be 
ignored  has  not  proved  altogether  tenable.  Aside  from  remedies 
heretofore  mentioned,  colonization  and  segregation,  discussion 
recurs  as  to  what  will  be  the  ultimate  future  of  the  Negro 
in  our  civilization — whether  it  will  be  an  increase  of  the  race 
and  inter-racial  struggle,  or  a  degeneration  and  dying  out, 
amalgamation  or  extermination,  a  peasantry  class  upon  the  land 
or  a  parallel  civilization  without  segregation.  The  Negro  fre 
quently  repeats  that  he  wants  but  to  be  left  alone.  Carried 
to  its  conclusion  there  is  even  in  this  a  loss  presaged  to  both 
races  in  sympathy  and  understanding;  it  has  been  pointed  out 
that  the  spiritual  bond  and  richness  of  simple  and  dignified 
intimate  contact  of  pre-Civil  War  times  is  disappearing  and 
in  danger  of  being  replaced,  if  not  already  replaced,  by  an 
exclusiveness  that  generates  misunderstanding,  pride  and  strife. 
In  the  final  analysis  there  is  frequently  a  return  to  the  solution 
of  patience,  a  mutual  attempt  at  understanding,  the  natural 
evolution  of  the  problems  by  the  process  of  time  and  earnest 
effort.  Already  there  have  been  both  mutual  and  independent 
constructive  efforts  afoot  in  the  endeavor  to  promote  better  and 
more  fundamentally  just  relations.  Especially  noteworthy  was 
an  international  conference  called  by  DuBois  during  the  Peace 
Conference  in  Paris,  which  represented,  also,  a  step  in  racial 
unity.  The  trend  of  the  times  is  in  larger  social  consciousness 
and  brotherhood.  There  is  room  for  the  races  to  work  inde 
pendently  and  at  peace,  to  transmute  strength  not  into  aggres 
siveness,  but  into  harmony  and  cooperation,  and  a  goal  for 
each  race  to  carry  its  own  growth  and  its  responsibility  to  the 


Jo  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

other  to  the  highest  point.  It  is  to  the  credit  of  both  races 
that  the  best  elements  of  each  repudiate  the  perpetration  of 
wrongs  on  either  side  and  courageously  try  to  abate  the  race 
problem  into  ways  that  will  not  violate  the  rights,  self-respect, 
and  social  consciousness  of  either  race,  but  promote  their 
natural  attainment,  evolution  and  worth. 

JULIA  E.  JOHNSEN. 


HISTORY 

ORIGIN  OF  THE  NEGRO  RACE1 

Before  stating  my  theory  as  to  the  origin  of  the  negro  race, 
I  should  like  to  lead  the  reader  in  a  general  way  from  that  period 
just  preceding  the  legendary  and  historic  period  down  to  the  pres 
ent  condition  of  negro  types  found  in  Africa.  At  the  outset  I 
frankly  confess  my  agreement  with  those  savants  who  give  an 
Asiatic  origin  to  man,  because,  first  of  all,  the  very  earliest  rec 
ords,  monumental  or  written,  prove  the  influence  of  Asia  on 
Africa,  while  there  seems  to  be  nothing  to  exhibit  African  influ 
ence  on  Asia.  On  the  sculptures  of  Egyptian  monuments,  on  the 
face  of  the  Sphynx,  in  the  features  of  the  most  ancient  mummies, 
and  in  those  of  Egyptian  wooden  and  stone  statues,  I  see  the 
Afro-Asiatic  type  as  clearly  as  I  see  it  in  the  faces  of  the  fel 
laheen  and  nobles  of  the  present  day. 

Down  to  the  fifth  century  before  Christ,  Egypt  was  commonly 
believed  to  belong  to  Asia;  but  though  since  that  period  she  has 
been  admitted  to  belong  to  Africa,  because  of  her  river  and  the 
land  formed  by  it,  moderns  as  well  as  the  ancients  have  persisted 
in  acting  on  the  supposition  that  she  is  Asiatic.  Before  the  later 
Asiatics  crowded  into  Egypt,  there  was,  no  doubt,  an  earlier  race 
which  we  distinguish  by  the  term  African,  because  we  find  com 
paratively  little  of  that  type  in  other  continents;  but  it  is  clear 
that,  whatever  proportion  of  it  sought  refuge  in  the  interior  of 
Africa,  enough  individuals  were  left  to  make  an  indelible  im 
pression  on  the  newcomers,  and  form  a  separate  race,  which  on 
account  of  its  peculiar  character  came  to  be  known  as  Egyptian. 
From  the  time  when  this  new  race  founded  the  kingdom,  formu 
lated  its  severe  religion,  and  distinguished  itself  by  its  aloofness 
from  other  peoples,  there  appears  to  have  been  a  perpetual  strug 
gle  as  to  whether  Asiatic  or  African  blood  should  predominate; 
and  ancient  writers  were  as  much  puzzled  as  moderns  are  as  to 
what  continent  the  old  Egyptian  race  was  originally  derived  from. 

1  By  Sir  Henry  M.  Stanley.  North  American  Review  170:656-65.  May, 
1900. 


12  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

Leaving  the  primitive  African  out  for  the  present,  let  me  say 
that  we  must  go  back  to  pre-Aryan  times  to  find  the  ancestry  of 
those  early  Asiatics  who,  entering  Egypt,  originated  the  peculiar 
Egyptian  race.  These  people  are  commonly  called  Turanians, 
and  they  have  been  variously  described  as  "dilsky,  dark,  black, 
black-skinned,  and  their  hair  as  varying  from  coarse,  straight, 
black  hair,"  to  "curly,"  "crinkly"  and  "woolly."  The  center  of  this 
race  appears  to  have  been  in  the  neighborhood  of  Accad,  where, 
it  has  been  found,  a  King  Sargon  reigned  about  3800,  B.C. 

Sixteen  hundred  miles  to  the  northeast  there  was  developed 
in  process  of  time  a  different  race  altogether,  of  light  complexion, 
with  blue  or  gray  eyes,  and  "blood  brown"  and  light  hair.  It  was 
called  "Arya,"  which  means  the  noble  or  ruling  race.  Finding 
its  habitat  near  the  Hindoo  Koosh  too  limited,  it  spread  itself 
westward  over  the  Iranic  plateau,  and  across  the  Tigris  into  the 
Euphrates  Valley. 

At  what  early  date  the  Turanians  near  Accad  first  felt  the 
pressure  of  the  Aryan  multitudes,  history  makes  no  mention ;  but 
when  the  Aryans,  still  expanding,  reached  the  Indus  about  2000, 
B.C.,  they  found  India  peopled  by  a  Turanian  population.  There 
fore,  by  inference  we  may  assume  that,  if  the  Indian  peninsula 
from  the  Himalaya  to  the  Deccan  was  already  so  well  filled  at 
2000,  B.C.,  Egypt,  lying  much  nearer  and  smaller,  must  have  been 
occupied  some  thousands  of  years  previous. 

In  the  Mahabharata,  the  Aryan  epic  written  about  1500,  B.C., 
we  find  earnest  invocations  to  the  gods  against  the  Turanians, 
and  such  allusion  to  their  appearance  as  to  leave  no  doubt  of 
their  color.  The  gods  are  implored  to  give  the  Aryans  power 
over  the  "black-skinned"  Dasyus,  the  black  inhabitants  of  Him- 
avat  (Himalaya)  and  the  "Black  Cudra  of  the  Ganges." 

We  cannot  dogmatize  upon  the  true  date  when  the  Turanian 
center  at  Accad  was  pierced  by  the  Aryan  wedge ;  but  it  is 
natural  to  suppose  that,  as  the  Aryans  were  advancing  from  the 
East,  the  alarmed  Turanians  would  take  the  direction  furthest 
from  the  pressure.  By  the  traces  they  left  behind  them  we  know 
that  some  fled  to  Egypt  and  to  Southern  Arabia,  along  the  shore 
of  the  Persian  Gulf,  and  others  to  the  Armenian  mountains — the 
southern  shore  of  the  Black  Sea  toward  the  Caucasus  on  one 
hand  and  the  Bosphorus  on  the  other — and  so  northward  to 
Hyperborean  climes  in  the  tracks  of  a  still  earlier  type  of  man. 
Long  continued  research  by  Egyptologists  has  fixed  the  age 


THE   NEGRO   PROBLEM  13 

of  Menes  at  about  5000,  B.C.,  or  3000  years  earlier  than  the  Aryan 
descent  upon  India.  As  the  consolidation  of  tribes  into  a  nation 
would  require  500  years  at  least,  we  must  add  about  that  number 
of  years  to  the  age  of  Menes  to  find  the  beginning  of  the  people 
who  consolidated  themselves  into  natural  strength. 

On  the  Asiatic  continent  there  are  still  abundant  evidences 
of  the  color  of  early  man.  In  the  Dravidian  Hill  tribes,  in 
Eastern  Assam,  the  Malacca  peninsula,  Perak,  Cochin  China, 
the  Andaman,  Sandal  and  Nicobar  Islands,  we  find  from  a  host 
of  authorities  that  it  was  black,  and  that  some  of  the  people 
had  decidedly  woolly  hair,  others  kinky  or  frizzly  hair,  others 
straight  and  coal  black.  A  still  earlier  man  may  be  represented 
by  the  Negrillos — the  Ainus,  the  Esquimaux  and  the  Lapps. 

On  the  African  continent  may  be  found  their  congeners  in 
the  pure  Negroes  and  the  pigmies. 

Logan,  a  prolific  writer  upon  Asiatic  ethnology,  appears 
to  be  convinced  that  early  man's  first  home  was  in  Africa. 
Sir  Wm.  Flower  believed  that  he  originated  in  Southern  India 
and,  spreading  east  and  west,  peopled  Melanesia  and  Africa. 
Allen  derived  the  African  Negroes  from  Asia.  Professor  Seeley 
claimed  that  the  Negro  race  occupied  a  belt  of  land  extending 
from  Africa  to  Melanesia,  which  has  since  been  submerged. 
De  Quatrofages*  theory  was  that  man  originated  in  tertiary 
times  in  Northern  Asia,  that  the  glacial  period  caused  a  great 
migration,  but  that  the  greatest  mass  of  primitive  humanity 
grouped  itself  in  the  Central  Asiatic  highlands,  when  the  three 
fundamental  types,  physical  and  linguistic,  arose.  The  black  race, 
he  thought,  appeared  first  in  Southern  Asia  between  the  high 
lands  and  the  sea. 

The  earliest  writers,  such  as  Herodotus,  Aristotle,  Pliny  and 
Pomponius  Mela  mention  the  countries  which  were  peopled  by 
the  Asiatic  blacks.  Thus,  at  the  eastern  extremity  of  the  Black 
Sea,  Herodotus  relates  that  he  found  the  Colchians  were  "black- 
skinned,"  with  "woolly  black  hair,"  and  conjectured  therefrom 
that  they  were  of  an  Egyptian  race.  By  inference  wejearn 
that  the  Egyptians  or  some  of  them  were  of  that  type,  "black 
and  woolly  haired,"  but,  in  his  description  of  the  troops  under 
the  Persian  banner,  he  draws  a  distinction  between  the  Eastern 
and  Western  Ethiopians.  The  first,  he  says,  had  ^straight,  black 
hair,"  while  that  of  the  latter  was  "quite  woolly." 

When  the  Aryans  finally  extended  their  conquests  to  Egypt, 


14  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

we  may  reasonably  suppose  that,  however  few  or  many  of  the 
primitive  people  had  already  started  on  their  wanderings  into 
unknown  Africa,  the  shock  of  the  Aryan  advent  must  have  then 
given  those  remaining  a  stronger  impulse  to  scatter  inland.  It 
is  clear  from  the  tributes  illustrated  on  the  Theban  monuments, 
that  some  of  these  fugitives  from  Egypt  had  prospered  in  the 
African  interior;  and  it  is  just  as  clear  from  the  brilliancy  of 
their  painted  portraits  in  the  tombs  near  Karnak,  that  the 
prisoners  brought  from  Inner  Africa  resembled  the  average 
brown  and  black  woolly-haired  African  of  today.  As  early  as 
2500,  B.  C.,  Sankhara  invaded  Ophir  and  Punt  (Somali  Land) 
and  brought  much  booty  therefrom.  In  2400,  B.  C.,  Osirtasen  I. 
repeated  the  expedition.  In  1600,  B.  C.,  Thothmes  III.  returned 
victorious  from  Punt;  and  in  1322,  B.  C.,  the  great  Sesostris 
inscribed  his  exploits  in  Ethiopia  on  the  monuments.  The 
Ethiopians  built  cities  of  renown,  and  grew  into  a  proud  and 
conquering  nation,  having  at  an  early  period  found  that  across 
the  Red  Sea  their  Turanian  congeners  were  settled  in  Southern 
Arabia,  with  whom  they  established  a  valuable  trade.  The 
ruins  of  Meroe,  their  ancient  capital,  between  Berber  and 
Khartoum,  rival  those  of  Egypt.  The  effect  of  these  on  Diodorus 
was  such  that  he  ascribed  to  the  Ethiopians  the  origin  of  Egyptian 
religion  and  art !  A  prince  of  Ethiopia — the  famous  Menon — 
lent  aid  to  Troy  in  the  thirteenth  century  before  Christ.  An 
army  under  Shiskak,  of  Ethiopia,  invaded  Palestine  with  1,200 
chariots  and  60,000  horsemen.  Zerah,  an  Ethiopian,  had  started 
to  fight  Asa,  King  of  Judah,  with  "a  thousand  thousand"  men. 
Tirhakah,  the  "Melek  Cush,"  King  of  the  Ethiopians,  defeated 
Sennacherib. 

In  the  reign  of  Psammetichus  I.,  successor  of  Tirhakah, 
240,000  Egyptian  soldiers  affronted  by  their  king  emigrated  to 
Ethiopia  and  were  allotted  lands  in  the  region  of  the  Automolii, 
probably  near  the  modern  Senaar.  Until  the  seventh  century. 
A.  D.,  Ethiopia  experienced  the  ups  and  downs  of  Egypt;  but 
at  this  period  the  fanatic  Arabs,  unable  to  conquer  the  people 
of  Abyssinia  (Ethiopia),  succeeded  in  isolating  them,  with  the 
rest  of  the  African  continent  to  the  south,  from  the  civilized 
world. 

It  will  thus  be  seen  that  another  barrier,  no  less  rigid  and 
strong  than  the  first,  was  raised  against  the  African  race. 

The  severe  and  exclusive  Egyptians  by  their  occupation  of 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  15 

Egypt  had  blocked  the  return  of  the  primitive  settlers  in  Africa, 
at  the  northeastern  end;  the  i,5oo-mile  wide  Sahara  and  the 
Mediterranean  Sea  prevented  communication  with  the  progres 
sive  nations  of  Europe ;  the  Atlantic  and  Indian  Oceans  separated 
them  from  all  mankind  on  the  west,  south  and  east.  The  Straits 
of  Babel  Mandeb  had,  however,  afforded  Ethiopia  means  of 
communication  with  the  people  of  Arabia,  the  Sabaeans  and  the 
Jews,  and  the  Ethiopians  had  profited  in  culture  and  wealth ; 
but  the  fanatical  Arabs  closed  even  this  passage  to  the  outside 
world. 

This  is  what  makes  Africa  the  best  place  in  which  to  study 
primitive  man,  as  he  must  have  been  in  Asia,  Europe  and 
America,  before  history  was  conceived. 

It  is  only,  in  fact,  within  the  last  thirty  years  that  civilization 
can  be  said  to  have  obtained  a  sure  footing  in  the  interior,  and 
that  we  have  been  enabled  to  take  note  of  the  effects  of  certainly 
7,000  years  of  in-breeding,  consequent  upon  the  long  segregation 
of  the  black  people  within  their  impassable  boundaries. 

Today,  the  descendants  of  the  primitive  Africans  are  to  be 
found  south  of  the  twentieth  degree  of  north  latitude;  and,  de 
spite  the  thousands  of  years  during  which  they  have  been  im 
prisoned  within  the  continent,  they  have  retained  in  a  remarkable 
degree  the  physical  characteristics  of  their  primeval  progenitors. 
The  dwarfish  tribes  who  captured  the  five  Nasamonian  explorers 
in  the  fifth  century,  B.  C,  near  the  Niger,  are  still  represented  by 
'the  pigmy  Wambutti  and  the  Akkas  of  the  Congo  forest,  the 
Batwa  of  the  Central  Congo  plains,  the  Akoas  and  Obongoes  of 
the  Gaboon,  and  the  Bushmen  of  South  Africa. 

The  pure  Negroes  are  in  a  great  majority  over  all  other  races 
in  Africa,  and  are  almost  as  much  scattered  over  the  continent 
as  we  believe  the  Turanians  were  over  the  world ;  but,  wherever 
located,  they  are  easily  recognizable  among  their  colored  con 
geners. 

That  the  reader  may  not  be  wearied  with  African  names,  it  is 
best  to  divide  Africa  into  divisions. 

The  first,  beginning  from  the  west,  includes  the  Niger  basin 
and  its  outskirts.  The  most  prominent  peoples  in  it  are  the 
Haussa,  Yorubas,  Fantis,  Mandingoes,  Wangara,  Kanuri  and 
Baghermis.  These  generally  are  of  average  height,  but  vary 
greatly  in  complexion,  from  dead  black  to  dingy  yellow.  The 
darker  are  more  often  found  along  the  coast,  those  on  the  desert 


16  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

border  are  much  mixed  with  Berbers  and  Afro-Semitics  from 
the  east.  The  masses  in  the  interior,  though  distinctly  Negro  in 
complexion  and  physical  character,  possess  considerable  aptitudes 
for  progress,  as  if  long  ago  a  higher  race  had  impregnated  them. 

The  second  division  comprises  all  that  vast  territory  extend 
ing  to  the  Nile  from  the  fifteenth  degree  of  east  longitude,  and 
southerly  along  the  line  of  Nile  waters  and  westward  of  the  lake 
region  down  to  the  Zambesi  River.  The  best  known  of  these 
tribes  are  the  Shilluks,  Dinkas,  Nuba,  Niam-Niam,  Mabode, 
Azange,  Baris  and  the  Congo  tribes,  such  as  the  Manyema, 
Bakongo,  Bateke,  By-yanzi,  Balunda,  Balua  and  the  Zambesi- 
Marotse,  and  others.  In  this  division,  the  number  of  sub-tribes 
is  immense.  Except  on  the  Nile  shores,  scarcely  any  of  these 
tribes  would  be  called  black  by  an  expert  in  African  color,  but 
rather  a  varying  brown,  between  a  light  bronze  and  a  brown 
verging  on  blackness.  They  are  all,  however,  pure  Negro  in  type 
and  are  probably  the  finest  specimens  of  unmixed  Negro  human 
ity  in  Africa,  being  well  developed  and  of  great  muscular 
strength.  Few  of  these  peoples  in  the  central  region  have  shown 
such  advance  in  native  manufactures  as  may  be  seen  in  Nigeria, 
but  capacity  for  improvement  is  evinced  by  the  beautiful  brass 
and  iron  ornaments  and  weapons  of  the  Mabode  and  By-yanzi,  by 
the  hut  architecture  and  domestic  utensils  of  the  Monbuttu,  the 
grass  cloths  of  the  Bateke  and  the  trading  shrewdness  and  enter 
prise  of  the  By-yanzi. 

If  we  proceed  now  to  the  eastern  division,  which  stretches 
from  the  Jub  River  to  the  Limpopo,  and  ta*ke  a  depth  inland  of 
about  300  miles,  we  find  another  set  of  Negro  tribes  remarkably 
like  those  met  in  the  second  division,  of  good  height,  well  set,  and 
admirably  muscular.  Where  the  land  is  low,  as  in  the  immediate 
hinterland,  the  climate  is  hot  and  moist  and  the  tribes  are  of  a 
livid  black,  but  immediately  the  highlands  are  reached  the  com 
plexion  lightens  and  the  physique  of  the  people  improves.  Many 
of  the  children,  as  in  Ugogo  and  Unyamwezi,  are  almost  fair  in 
comparison  with  their  parents.  Nearer  the  coast  land,  many  in 
dividuals  among  the  tribes  exhibit  the  effect  of  contact  with  a 
low-statured  race. 

The  eastern  sea  fringe  is  occupied  by  a  very  mixed  race, 
wherein  may  be  traced  repeated  blendings  with  migrants  from 
foreign  stocks.  It  requires  no  great  discernment  to  perceive  that 
the  indigenous  peoples  have  freely  mixed  with  Somalis,  Gallas, 


THE   NEGRO   PROBLEM  17 

Abyssinians,  Arabs,  East  Indians  and  perhaps  Jews,  Sabaeans  and 
Phoenicians.  The  complexion  of  the  people  is  of  all  shades  from 
deep  black  to  light  olive,  and  the  hair  also  proves  the  effects  of 
foreign  blood,  though,  as  the  foreigners  were  not  in  such  numbers 
as  to  form  a  permanent  race,  there  is  a  continued  tendency 
toward  reversion. 

The  most  interesting  division  is  the  eastern  central,  which  lies 
between  the  lakes  and  the  eastern  division;  because,  without 
doubt,  it  marks  the  highway  of  the  warrior  tribes  which  advanced 
in  repeated  waves  toward  the  south,  absorbed  whole  tribes  of 
the  autochthonous  peoples,  blended  with  them,  and  formed  a  su 
perior  and  victorious  Negroid  race.  It  is  easy  to  trace  the  march 
of  this  race  through  the  ordinary  Negro  tribes,  by  the  physical 
superiority,  the  taller  stature,  the  courage,  discipline,  organiza 
tion  and  warring  propensities  of  its  descendants.  The  traditions 
of  the  natives  also  guide  us  as  to  the  direction  whence  their  an 
cestors  came. 

In  my  opinion,  two  streams  of  migrants  flowed  from  the  base 
of  the  Abyssinian  Mountains — one  from  the  direction  of  Senaar 
and  Fazogl,  and  the  other  from  Shoa.  On  approaching  the  Vic 
toria  Nile,  the  first  crossed  into  Unyoro,  and  thence  south  be 
tween  the  lakes;  the  second  advanced  by  way  of  Turkan  and 
Kavirondo  and  overspread  what  is  called  the  Great  Rift  Valley. 
It  is  clear  that  the  first  stream  was  the  largest,  because  all  trace 
of  the  second  seems  to  be  lost  about  the  sixth  degree  of  south 
latitude,  while  the  course  of  the  other  is  perceptible  among  the 
Kafirs  at  the  Cape  and  the  Zulus  of  Natal. 

Before  the  conquering  march  of  this  host,  the  primitive 
peoples  fled  into  the  places  of  refuge  which  lay  on  either  side  of 
the  route,  such  as  the  islands  in  the  lakes,  the  higher  slopes  of 
Ruwenzori,  and  Mfumbiro  mountains,  the  Congo  forest,  and 
other  out-of-the-way  resorts.  It  is  among  the  descendants  of 
these  refugees  that  one  may  find  customs  and  habits  reminding 
us  of  the  fish-eaters  (the  Ichthyophagi),  the  "Cave  Dwellers," 
and  the  nomadic  "Blemmyes"  of  Arabia.  These  tribes  are  always 
subordinate  to  the  descendants  of  the  conquerors  who  settled  and 
occupied  the  lands,  and  who  are  today  known  as  Wanyoro, 
Waganda,  Wanyambu,  Waha,  Wafipa,  Wangoni,  Matabele,  Zulu, 
etc. 

Some  of  these  are  more  Negrified  than  others.  They  all 
have  the  woolly  hair  and  many  among  them  are  as  Negroid  in 


i8  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

feature  as  the  purest  Negro.  But  the  majority  still  retain  points 
in  their  physiognomies  which  stamp  them  as  descendants  of  the 
old  Ethiopian  stock,  which  has  fertilized  this  belt  of  African 
humanity. 

The  Wanyambu  further  south  than  the  Waganda,  and  the 
Wanyankori  also,  exhibit  as  close  an  affinity  with  the  Abyssinians 
as  the  Wanyoro.  In  their  lengthy  limbs  and  their  slender  build, 
as  well  as  in  their  refined  features  and  small  hands,  they  prove 
their  descent.  Among  various  tribes  further  south,  such  as  the 
Wakaranga  and  Wanyamwezi,  the  Watusi  herdsmen  again  main 
tain  the  tradition;  and,  though  surrounded  by  powerful  negro 
tribes,  they  refuse  to  be  contaminated  by  intermarriage  with 
them,  and  strike  the  traveller  at  once  by  their  tall,  slender, 
elegant  figures,  expressive  eyes  and  delicate  features.  But  for 
the  hair,  they  might  be  taken  for  a  tribe  of  Bishari  lately  imported 
into  this  region. 

As  we  proceed  south,  we  enter  a  region  where  the  Negro  blood 
and  type  predominate,  but  a  few  hundred  miles  beyond  it  we  pick 
up  the  trail  of  the  Ethiopian  again  in  the  Wangoni  country, 
only  to  lose  it,  however,  beyond  their  boundary.  Across  the 
Zambesi  in  the  Matabele  country,  we  recognize  the  type  once 
more,  and  behold  the  familiar  features  of  Waha,  Wakerewe 
and  Waganda,  whenever  an  Indaba  is  held.  Beyond  the  Matabele 
are  the  Zulus,  who  resemble  very  strongly  the  best  class  of 
Waganda. 

In  Cape  Colony,  the  extremity  of  Africa,  where  humanity 
has  whirled  about  considerably  and  formed  curious  mixtures, 
we  see  the  Hottentots,  Griquas,  Namaquas  and  Korannas,  a 
type  formed  by  the  average  Negro  blended  with  the  primitive 
"earth  diggers"  or  Bushmen,  when  the  Bushmen  were  not  so  few 
or  so  much  despised  as  they  are  today.  This  breed  is  not  so 
tall  as  the  Negro  of  the  central  regions,  nor  so  dwarfish  as  the 
Bushmen.  They  have  the  clayey  complexion  and  high  cheek 
bones  of  the  latter,  as  well  as  their  tufted  hair,  but  the  muscular 
development  and  build  of  the  true  Negro. 

As  regards  North  Africa,  it  is  unnecessary  to  go  into  details 
respecting  the  Berber  stock,  which  is  the  ancient  "Barberi"  of 
the  Romans.  The  basic  stock  was,  no  doubt,  that  which  peopled 
Egypt  in  the  pre-historic  age;  but  as  its  area  was  much  larger. 
and  as  it  formed  itself  into  several  independent  tribes  and 
nations,  it  was  more  exposed  to  the  influence  of  the  many 
European  and  Asiatic  nations  which  in  the  course  of  time 


THE  NEGRO   PROBLEM  19 

formed  colonies,  of  which  Dido's  colony  is  an  example.  Among 
them,  Greeks,  Phoenicians,  Goths,  Gauls,  Romans,  Celtiberians, 
Arabs,  Jews,  French  and  Spaniards  have  left  their  traces  freely 
on  the  mass  of  the  peoples  now  found  there,  while  the  negro 
blood  has  not  been  wanting  to  give  color  and  picturesqueness 
to  their  physiognomies. 

Darwin  says  in  his  "Descent  of  Man" :  "Although  the  existing 
races  of  men  differ  in  many  respects,  as  in  color,  hair,  shape  of 
skull,  proportions  of  the  body,  etc.,  yet,  if  their  whole  organiza 
tion  be  taken  into  consideration,  they  are  found  to  resemble  each 
other  closely  in  a  multitude  of  points." 

No  traveller  who  has  penetrated  Africa,  with  an  open  mind, 
can  refrain  from  agreeing  with  this.  I  have  endeavored  to  show 
the  effects  on  the  Africans  of  more  than  7,000  years  of  in 
breeding,  to  which  they  were  compelled  by  their  peculiar  environ 
ments,  and  the  rigid  natural  and  artificial  barriers  raised  against 
them,  by  which  the  original  type  of  African  has  been  perpetuated 
by  repetition.  When  this  fact  first  dawns  on  the  traveller,  he 
is  moved  by  an  emotion  as  great  as  that  which  affects  him  when 
gazing  on  the  mummy  of  Sesostris  after  it  lay  entombed  for 
thirty-three  centuries.  He  has  viewed  the  physiognomies  of 
his  own  prehistoric  ancestors,  who  occupied  Asia  hundreds  of 
centuries  before  Menes  and  Ninus  existed;  and  if  he  has  been 
led  by  his  thought  to  trace  the  fortunes  of  those  pre-historic 
dark  men,  conquerers  of  the  African,  who  elected  to  wander 
through  Asia  and  Europe,  he  will  begin  to  realize  what  his 
own  cave-dwelling  ancestry,  who  were  contemporaries  of  the 
mammoth  and  the  lion,  were  like. 

There  is  no  need  to  seek  for  traces  of  a  submerged  continent 
to  locate  the  home  of  the  first  woolly-haired  Negro,  or  the  clay- 
colored  Bushmen  and  darker  pigmy.  Asia  is  of  sufficient  ampli 
tude,  provided  we  allow  time  enough  to  take  into  consideration 
its  varieties  of  climate,  for  the  strange  divergences  in  the  human 
races  to  have  taken  place  within  it.  The  continent  that  exhibits 
the  almond-eyed  Mongolian,  the  blue-eyed  Circassian,  the  deep, 
black  Gondas  and  Bhillas,  the  dark  Paharias,  the  dwarfish  Aeta, 
the  hook-nosed  Jew,  and  the  short-nosed  Tartar,  could  surely, 
in  the  very  earliest  ages  of  man,  have  produced  such  contracts 
as  the  woolly-haired  Negro,  and  the  silken-haired  Aryan.  But 
in  all  my  travels  I  have  seen  nothing  more  wonderful  than  this, 
that,  in  whatever  disguise  I  found  man,  something  in  him  seems 
to  justify  the  belief  that  "we  are  all  the  children  of  one  Father." 


20  SELECTED  ARTICLES 


THE  WORLD-POSITION  OF  THE  NEGRO  AND 
NEGROID  1 

By  Negro  must  also  be  understood  Negroid,  that  is  to  say,  any 
human  race,  nationality,  or  people  sufficiently  tinged  with  Negro 
blood  to  display  the  Negroid  characteristics  of  a  dark  skin  and  a 
spirally  coiled  hair.  No  existing  type  of  the  human  species  is  so 
markedly  set  off  from  the  white  or  Caucasian  division  as  the 
Negro.  Any  type  of  Mongol  or  Amerindian  can  mingle  with 
a  white  race,  and  a  hybrid  in  the  first  generation  will  not  be  so 
alien  or  repellant  to  the  pure  white  type  that  it  may  not  quickly 
and  easily  fuse  into  the  white  community;  and,  of  course,  the 
more  the  white  intermarries  with  the  Tartar,  the  Chinese,  the 
Japanese,  the  Eskimo,  the  Amerindian,  or  the  Malay,  the  more 
those  races  are  approximated  to  the  Caucasian  group.  Indeed, 
some  comparative  anatomists  like  Professor  W.  H.  L.  Duckworth 
scarcely  pretend  to  discriminate  anatomically  between  the  white 
man,  the  Mongolian,  or  the  Amerindian:  merely  between  the 
Caucasian  type  and  the  Eskimo,  which  last,  though  specialised 
in  some  directions,  may  be  held  to  represent  very  nearly  the 
primitive  Mongolian  offshoot  from  the  basal  stock  of  Homo 
sapiens.  There  is  less  racial  bar  between  the  Caucasian  and 
the  Mongol  than  there  is  between  the  Australoid  and  the 
Caucasian.  Yet  these  two  last  named  have  freely  intermingled, 
though,  according  to  anatomists,  the  Australoid  type  represents 
more  nearly  than  any  other  living  human  variety  the  Neander- 
thaloid  man  of  Palaeolithic  Europe,  and  perhaps  in  a  lesser 
degree  the  original  basal  form  of  Homo  sapiens,  from  which 
all  existing  races,  varieties,  or  subspecies  have  been  derived. 

Thus  we  see  in  the  peoples  of  Polynesia  and  of  India  the 
results,  ancient  and  modern,  of  a  direct  mingling  between  the 
Caucasian  and  the  Australoid,  and  these  results,  where  they  are 
more  or  less  free  from  any  intermixture  with  the  Negro  stock, 
constitute  peoples  that,  when  their  social  status  has  been  raised, 
have  fused  without  difficulty  into  the  white  world.  For  instance, 
a  German  planter  in  Samoa  might  have  children  by  a  native 
woman,  a  Frenchman  likewise  in  Tahiti,  or  an  Englishman  by  a 

1  From  article  by  Sir  Harry  H.  Johnston,  G.C.M.G.,  K.C.B.,  D.Sc., 
formerly  British  Commissioner  and  Consul-General  in  Africa,  etc.  Uni 
versal  Races  Congress.  Papers  on  Inter-racial  Problems,  p.  328-36.  1911. 


THE  NEGRO   PROBLEM  21 

New  Zealand  Maori,  and  their  male  offspring  not  find  any 
sensible  colour  bar  standing  in  the  way  of  their  marrying  in  turn 
white  women  of  social  status  equivalent  to  their  own.  There  is 
more  difficulty  in  this  respect  in  regard  to  India,  simply  because 
the  whole  Indian  Peninsula  (like  some  of  the  Malay  Islands  and 
New  Guinea)  is  permeated  with  Negro  blood  of  the  original 
Asiatic  Negro  stock  which  we  find  subsisting  in  a  more  or  less 
pure  form  in  the  Andaman  Islands,  in  a  few  Nilgiri  tribes  of 
Southern  India,  in  the  Malay  Peninsula  and  one  or  two  Malay 
Islands,  and,  above  all,  in  the  great  islands  to  the  north-east  of 
New  Guinea  and  in  New  Guinea  itself.  The  indigenes  of  Tas 
mania,  before  they  were  exterminated  by  the  British  settlers, 
probably  exhibited  the  survival  either  of  examples  of  the  Negro 
stock  in  a  stage  very  near  to  that  at  which  it  first  diverged  from 
the  Australoid  form,  or  a  more  recent  hybrid  between  the 
Oceanic  Negroid  and  the  Australoid.  The  peoples  of  New 
Caledonia,  of  Fiji,  the  New  Hebrides,  many  parts  of  New  Guinea, 
the  Philippine  Islands,  and  even  Annam  and  Burma,  are  more  or 
less  tinged  with  ancient  Negro  intermixture,  the  degree  ranging 
from  an  almost  pure  Negro  form  to  the  very  faintest  indications 
of  Negro  affinities.  Consequently,  it  happens  that  many  of  the 
Eurasians  derived  from  a  cross  between  certain  Indian,  South 
Asiatic  and  Western  Polynesian  types  are  distinctly  less  pleasing 
to  the  racial  prejudice  of  the  pure  white  man  than  would  be  an 
Amerindian  half-breed  or  a  cross  between  a  European  and  a 
Samoan  or  Maori,  or  between  Japanese  and  Chinese  on  the  one 
hand  and  Europeans  on  the  other ;  but  simply  for  the  reason  that 
in  the  cross  between  the  average  Indian  or  Malaysian  and  the 
white  people,  there  is  betrayed  some  Negroid  characteristic  which 
for  deep-seated,  unexplained  reasons  arouses  an  inherent  dislike 
in  the  absolutely  pure-blood  white  people  of  Central  and  Northern 
Europe,  of  North  America,  or  of  white  Australia.  Herein  lies, 
indeed  (I  believe),  the  explanation  of  the  nearly-extinct  hatred 
of  the  Jew,  and  of  the  results  of  Jewish  intermarriage,  or  of 
the  similar  desire  to  decry  the  appearance  of  the  offspring 
proceeding  from  the  rare  unions  between  Nordic  white  men  and 
Egyptian  or  Moorish  women:  simply  the  fact  that  in  the  Jew, 
as  in  the  Egyptian  and  the  Moor,  there  is  a  varying  but  still 
discernible  element  of  the  Negro,  derived  in  the  case  of  the  Jew 
from  the  strong  infusion  of  Elamite  blood,  and  in  the  case^  of 
the  Moor,  from  the  obvious  connection  with  Negro  Africa. 


22  SELECTED  ARTICLES 

The  same  remarks  apply  in  certain  cases  to  the  peoples  of 
Southern  Persia  or  Eastern  Arabia,  the  Negro  intermixture  there 
being  due  not  only  to  the  Elamite  element  of  ancient  times,  but 
to  the  importation  on  a  large  scale  of  Negro  slaves  during  the 
whole  Islamic  period. 

Recent  discoveries  made  in  the  vicinity  of  the  principality  of 
Monaco,  and  others  in  Italy  and  Western  France — all  of  them 
analysed  in  the  monograph  on  the  skulls  found  in  the  grottoes  of 
Grimaldi,  edited  by  Dr.  Verneaux,  of  Paris,  and  published  in 
1909  by  the  Prince  of  Monaco — would  seem  to  reveal,  even  if 
some  of  their  deductions  are  discounted  and  a  few  statements 
regarded  as  erroneous,  the  actual  fact  that  many  thousand  years 
ago  a  Negroid  race  had  penetrated  through  Italy  into  France, 
leaving  traces  at  the  present  day  in  the  physiognomy  of  the 
peoples  of  Southern  Italy,  Sicily,  Sardinia,  Southern  and  Western 
France,  and  even  in  the  western  parts  of  the  United  Kingdom 
of  Great  Britain  and  Ireland.  There  are  even  at  the  present  day 
some  examples  of  the  Keltiberian  peoples  of  Western  Scotland, 
Southern  and  Western  Wales,  Southern  and  Western  Ireland, 
of  distinctly  Negroid  aspect,  and  in  whose  ancestry  there  is  no 
indication  whatever  of  any  connection  with  the  West  Indies  or 
with  modern  Africa.  Still  more  marked  is  this  feature  in  the 
peoples  of  Southern  and  Western  France  and  of  the  other  parts 
of  the  Mediterranean  already  mentioned.  There  is  a  strong 
Negroid  element  in  the  south  of  Spain  and  the  south  of  Portugal, 
but  we  are  not  entitled  in  default  of  other  evidence  to  assume 
that  this  is  due  to  such  an  ancient  Negroid  immigration  as  seems 
to  be  indicated  in  France  and  Italy.  Because,  in  the  first  place, 
the  repeated  Moorish  invasions  of  Spain  obviously  brought 
thither  a  very  considerable  infusion  of  Negro  blood  from  the 
Nigerian  Sudan,  while  Portugal  in  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth 
centuries  deliberately  imported  Negro  slaves  to  do  the  agricultural 
work  of  her  southern  provinces.  Hitherto — I  speak  under  cor 
rection — there  has  been  discovered  no  deeply-buried  skull  in 
Portugal  or  Spain  having  the  same  obvious  Negroid  character 
istics  as  the  skulls  found  in  ancient  burial-places  in  Italy  or  in 
France. 

Formerly,  it  was  the  fashion  amongst  anthropologists  to 
attribute  the  black-avised  peoples  of  Western  or  North-Western 
Europe— their  dark  hair,  brown  eyes,  tendency  to  a  swarthy 
skin,  and  comparative  length  or  shortness  of  limb  bones  and 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  23 

other  anatomical  features — to  the  persistence  in  those  regions 
of  a  strain  of  Neanderthaloid  or  Palaeolithic  man.  And  it  was 
assumed  that  because  the  modern  black  Australian  is  the  nearest 
living  representative  of  the  Neanderthaloid  type,  and  at  the 
same  time  is  more  or  less  of  a  "black"  man,  the  man  of  Neander 
thal,  Spy,  Heidelberg,  Krapina,  Galley  Hill  and  the  Correze 
must  have  been  similarly  black-skinned  or  of  a  very  dark  brown 
skin  colour,  possessing  likewise  black  hair  and  brown  eyes.  It 
is  permissible  from  the  little  we  know  to  assume  that  Homo 
primigenius  was  black-haired  and  had  a  brown  or  hazel-coloured 
iris  (blue-grey,  no  doubt,  in  newly-born  children,  as  it  is  so 
often  with  infant  Negroes  and  Asiatics),  and  there  may  have 
been  in  this  primitive  type  of  man  an  occasional  outbreak  of 
erythrism,  or  individuals  with  red  hair  and  a  light  yellow  iris; 
but  I  see  no  reason  whatever  to  assume  that  the  parent  of  the 
European  white  man — the  heavy-browed,  slightly  Simian  type, 
which  we  now  know  ranged  over  parts  of  North  Africa,  of 
Spain,  and  the  greater  part  of  Europe — had  a  black  or  a  dark- 
brown  skin  or  had  hair  which  was  flattened  to  an  ellipse  and 
inclined  to  be  spirally  twisted  in  its  growth.  On  the  contrary, 
Homo  primigenius,  or,  at  any  rate,  the  Neanderthaloid  type, 
may  have  had  a  skin  like  that  of  some  chimpanzees  or  of  the 
orang-utan,  ranging  in  colour  from  a  dirty-white  to  a  yellowish- 
gray;  while  the  hair  of  his  head  and  body,  though  normally 
black,  may  have  had  a  considerable  tendency  toward  brown. 
If  this  was  the  case,  then  it  would  seem  as  though  the  dark 
strain  of  pigmented  skin  and  curly  hair  which  permeates  so 
much  of  Europe  and  Asia  is  due  not  to  the  retention  of  the 
Home  primigenius  element,  but  to  the  invasion  of  those  regions 
in  ancient  times  by  Negro  peoples  emigrating  from  Southern 
Asia:  the  original  development  area,  as  far  as  we  can  guess,  of 
the  Negro  subspecies. 

Of  course,  in  considering  all  points  of  view,  we  must  bear 
in  mind  that  a  section  of  the  Negro  race— the  Bushman  element 
in  South  Africa — is  not  black-skinned,  but  yellow,  or  yellow- 
brown;  while  certain  tribes  of  Congo  pigmies  are  a  clear  reddish- 
yellow;  and  that  the  majority  of  Negro  babies  are  born  with  a 
yellowish  skin,  which  only  darkens  into  brown  or  black  a  few 
weeks  after  birth.  These  facts,  however,  may  only  tend  to 
show  that  the  basal  stock  of  humanity  was  yellow-skinned,  and 
that  in  the  case  of  the  Negro  and  Negroid  the  yellow,  as  soon 


24  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

as  the  specialisation  of  this  type  began,  deepened  rapidly  into 
dark-brown  or  black.  We  know  that  certain  races  of  Amer 
indians  absolutely  devoid  of  any  recent  intermixture  with  the 
Negro,  or  of  any  other  intermixture  at  any  time,  have  under 
conditions  of  local  environment  developed  very  dark-coloured 
skins.  The  Bushman  may  possibly  have  retained  the  original 
light-coloured  skin  of  the  Negroid  ancestor ;  or,  as  in  the  case 
of  those  Congo  pigmies  dwelling  in  the  densest  forests,  have 
under  diverse  conditions  of  environment  eliminated  much  of  the 
skin  pigment  and  become  in  course  of  time  yellow-skinned 
instead  of  dark  brown.  The  tendency  in  the  case  of  Congo 
pigmies  is  for  their  skin  colour  to  darken  in  the  next  generation 
which  is  born  under  better  conditions  of  life,  and  above  all, 
away  from  the  deep  shade  of  the  Congo  forests.  But  it  is 
probable  that  the  light-coloured  skin  of  the  Bushman  is  a  very 
ancient  feature.  There  are  sparse  indications  here  and  there 
that  the  Bushman  type  once  inhabited  the  valley  of  the  Upper 
Niger  and  the  adjacent  plateaus,  and  also  parts  of  North-East 
and  East  Africa ;  and  native  traditions  regarding  this  vanished 
type  assert  that  it  was  "red-skinned,"  that  is  to  say,  sufficiently 
light  in  colour  to  be  a  contrast  to  the  black  or  dark-brown 
Negroes  who  dispossessed  it,  yet  at  the  same  time  sufficiently 
sombre  in  tone  to  be  remarked  as  "red-skinned"  by  the  yellow- 
white  Fulas. 

The  nigrescence,  therefore,  of  Europe,  Asia,  North  Africa, 
and  Oceania  may  be  due  to  the  Negro,  who  in  many  other 
respects  is  the  opposite  pole  to  the  white  man.  Gradually  we 
seem  to  see  approaching  a  period  in  the  segregation  of  humanity 
when  there  may  be  two  rival  camps,  black  and  white,  though  the 
black  may  have  been  toned  down  to  a  pale  brown  and  the  white 
toned  up  to  a  warm  yellow. 

But  such  an  eventuality,  with  800,000,000  of  Dravidian  or 
Mongoloid  Asiatics  and  Amerindians  to  be  absorbed  into  the 
white  camp  would  occupy  such  a  lengthy  period  that  the  results 
which  might  accrue  from  this  division  of  the  human  species  into 
two  rival  and  diverging  types  need  not  occupy  the  attention  of 
practical  men  and  women  at  the  present  day.  The  point  which 
this  Congress  may  prefer  to  discuss  is  the  degree  to  which  the 
Negro  and  Negroid  may  make  common  cause  with  the  white 
peoples,  and  the  effect  which  might  consequently  be  produced 
by  any  considerable  extension  of  intermarriage. 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  25 

The  matter  of  skin  colour,  facial  outline,  and  of  hair  texture, 
is  largely  a  question  of  aesthetics.  If  we  could  imagine  some 
super-human  agency  looking  down  on  this  little  planet  with  a 
knowledge  and  appreciation  of  things  far  superior  to  that 
possessed  by  the  wisest  human  being,  we  might  hold  it  conceivable 
that  such  an  intelligence  would  either  see  that  there  was  not  a 
pin  to  choose  between  being  pink-skinned  or  brown-skinned, 
that  curly  hair  was  no  uglier  than  straight  hair,  or  a  Wellington 
nose  not  more  beautiful  than  one  of  low  bridge  with  wide- 
spreading  nostrils:  in  short,  that  a  well-developed  Negro  or 
Negress  was  no  uglier  than  a  well-developed  white  man  or  white 
woman,  provided  that  both  alike  were  good  examples  of  physical 
and  mental  efficiency.  Such  a  being  might  also  happen  to  know 
that  of  which  we  are  at  present  uncertain,  namely,  that  the 
Negro  originally — say  forty  thousand  to  ten  thousand  years  ago 
— had  a  greater  innate  feeling  for  art  and  music  than  his  white 
or  yellow  relations,  equally  with  himself  mere  hunters  of  wild 
beasts.  There  are  sufficient  indications  not  to  prove,  but  certainly 
to  make  not  ridiculous,  a  theory  which  might  attribute  to  the 
ancient  Negroid  permeation  of  Europe  and  Asia  a  love  of  music 
and  a  desire  to  reproduce  in  painting,  engraving,  or  sculpture 
the  striking  aspects  of  beasts  and  birds  or  of  human  life. 

It  may  be  also  that  the  Negro  has  acquired  in  a  severe  struggle 
against  the  micro-organisms  of  the  Tropics  a  power  of  resistance 
to  certain  diseases  not  as  yet  possessed  by  the  white  man  or 
the  yellow.  He  has  certainly  been  endowed  by  nature  with  a 
degree  of  race-fertility  probably  surpassing  that  of  the  European, 
Asiatic,  and  Amerindian  living  under  conditions  similarly 
unfavourable  to  the  struggle  for  existence.  Those  few  scientific 
men  in  Britain,  Germany,  France,  the  United  States,  and  Brazil 
who  have  striven  to  understand  the  anthropology  of  the  Negro, 
and  to  compare  it  with  that  of  the  white  man,  are  rather  inclined 
than  otherwise  to  argue  now  that  the  Negro  and  the  Negroid 
have  contributed  in  the  past,  and  still  more  may  contribute  in 
the  future,  a  very  important  quota  to  the  whole  sum  of  humanity, 
an  element  of  soundness  and  stability  in  physical  development 
and  certain  mental  qualities  which  the  perfected  man  of,  let  us 
say,  twenty-two  or  twenty-three  centuries  after  Christ  cannot 
afford  to  do  without.  Such  advisers  would  attempt  to  hold  us 
back  from  furious  raging  against  racial  intermixture,  and  above 
all,  from  any  policy  of  oppression  or  extirpation  to  which  from 


26  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

time  to  time  the  white  man  is  prone  when  he  thinks  that  the 
Negro  or  Negroid  gets  in  his  way. 

Some  people  claiming  to  be  equally  farsighted  and  superior  to 
the  temporary  prejudices  of  the  human  mind  hold  the  theory 
that  the  Negro  should  never  have  been  regarded  as  anything 
better  than  a  slave  to  the  white  peoples  and  to  the  yellow;  and 
that  the  enemies  of  the  perfect  man  of  the  future — those  who 
would  seek  to  delay  the  advance  of  human  perfection — are  the 
philanthropists  who  in  the  eighteenth  and  nineteenth  centuries 
used  their  great  influence  to  forbid  the  slave  trade,  to  abolish 
slavery,  and  to  erect  the  Negro  into  the  position  of  a  citizen  with 
no  legal  bar  to  his  equality  of  standing  with  the  white  man. 
These  open  foes  of  the  Negro  are  spiritually  the  brothers  of  the 
persons  who  hold,  or  who  have  held  in  their  past  writings,  that 
we  committed  a  fatal  mistake  when  we  introduced  European 
ideas  of  education  in  India. 

These  last  are  right,  no  doubt.  When  we  commenced  a 
hundred  years  ago  to  spread  education  broadcast  amongst  our 
subject  black  and  yellow  peoples,  we  sowed  the  dragon's  teeth. 
We  made  it  possible  for  generations  to  come  into  being  who 
should  see  the  world  through  our  eyes,  who  should  acquire  our 
knowledge  of  good  and  evil — that  knowledge  we  had  so  painfully 
gained  by  a  hundred  thousand  years  of  martyrdom,  of  unremitting 
struggle  with  natural  forces — and  should  seek  to  apply  to  their 
own  social  and  racial  troubles  the  solutions  we  had  found  so 
advantageous  in  our  own  case.  But  the  fact  is,  if  these  persons 
are  right,  that  the  mischief  began,  not  with  the  introduction  of 
modern  education  into  India  fifty  years  ago,  or  a  hundred  years 
ago,  or,  first,  the  setting  free,  and,  secondly,  the  missionary 
education  of  the  natives  of  Africa  and  the  Negroes  of  America, 
but  with  the  mission  and  the  teaching  of  Christ. 

This  long  martyrdom  (for  the  two  thousand  years  preceding 
the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century)  of  the  brown  and  yellow 
peoples  of  Asia  was  due  primarily  to  the  attempts  of  the  white 
man — in  the  form  of  Persian,  Greek,  Arab,  Afghan,  Portuguese, 
Frenchman,  Dutchman,  and  Englishman — to  push  the  stubborn 
Mongol  before  him,  and  to  enslave  more  or  less  the  weaker, 
more  Negroid,  Dravidian  populations;  a  task  in  which  the 
Buddhist  Mongol,  whenever  he  was  permitted  to  take  a  hand, 
showed  himself  quite  as  ruthless  as  the  Muhammadan  or 
mediaeval-Christian  white  man.  But,  strange  to  say,  the  teaching 
of  Christ  and  His  apostles  has  possessed  some  unconquerable 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  27 

surviving  influence  which  began  to  make  itself  felt  from  the 
end  of  the  fifteenth  century  in  the  humanitarian  teachings  of 
both  Catholic  and  Protestant.  These  doctrines  prevailed 
sufficiently  on  the  public  opinion  of  the  white  world  not  only  to 
hold  back  the  white  man  (when  he  had  the  power)  from 
exterminating  or  dehumanising  the  dark-skinned  races  which 
had  become  subject  to  him;  but  prevailed  even  to  force  him  to 
extend  the  gospel  of  Christ  to  those  peoples,  to  regard  them 
theoretically  as  equally  men  with  his  own  race,  and,  above  all, 
to  give  them  the  advantages  of  a  European  education. 

For  aught  I  know,  the  teaching  of  Christ  may  have  been  the 
work  of  reactionary  Nature:  judging  from  the  writings  of  not 
a  few  amongst  my  fellow-countrymen  and  others  in  the  United 
States  and  in  Germany,  it  must  have  been  a  wrong  idea,  since  its 
practical  application  would  inevitably  tend  to  draw  all  branches 
of  the  human  race  together,  with  the  ultimate  result  of  racial 
fusion,  of  equal  privileges  for  all  human  beings  possessing  the 
same  degree  of  education,  of  moral  and  physical  worth. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  coming  and  the  teaching  of  Christ 
may  have  been  the  most  remarkable  event  in  the  history  of  the 
human  species  since  man  emerged  definitely  from  apehood ;  and 
the  logical  carrying  out  of  Christian  principles  may  lead  not  only 
to  the  gradual  extinction  of  race-hatred,  envy,  and  malice,  but 
more  quickly  to  the  formation  of  the  perfect  man  than  might 
be  brought  about  under  other  religious  systems. 

According  to  the  nearest  estimate  one  can  make,  there  are  at 
present  about  135,000,000  of  Negroes  and  Negroids  in  the  world, 
as  contrasted  with  575,000,000  of  white  or  Caucasian  people, 
about  520,000,000  yellow  or  Mongolian,  300,000  Dravidians,  &c. 
(dark-skinned,  straight-haired,  well-featured  Asiatics,  com 
pounded  mainly  of  Caucasian  and  Australoid  elements),  and 
10,000,000  Amerindians  (who  are  probably  an  ancient  mingling 
between  the  Caucasian  and  the  Mongol). 

Of  these  135,000,000  Negroes  and  Negroids,  some  109,000,000 
live  in  Africa,  24,000,000  in  the  New  World,  and  perhaps  2,000,000 
in  India,  the  Andaman  Islands,  Malay  Peninsula,  Philippines, 
New  Guinea,  the  Bismarck  Archipelago,  Neu  Pommern,  and 
Oceania  generally.  It  is  noteworthy  that  with  the  doubtful 
exception  of  the  Mongolian  (as  represented  by  the  very  mixed 
population  of  Japan,  an  Empire  which  contains  much  "white" 
blood  of  ancient  stock  over  an  Asiatic  Negroid  strain),  the 


28  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

Negro  is  the  only  non-Caucasian  race  which  has  so  far  furnished 
rivals  to  the  white  man  in  science,  the  arts,  literature,  and 
mathematics.  So  far — excepting  a  few  Dravidians,  Amerindians, 
and  Japanese,  all  of  these  half-brothers  of  the  white  man — the 
other  peoples  of  Asia,  Africa,  Oceania,  and  aboriginal  America 
have  kept  themselves  to  themselves,  and  have  never  ventured  to 
compete  with  the  white  man  in  his  own  sphere.  But  a  Negro 
has  now  been  to  the  North  Pole,  and  there  are  famous  Negro 
or  Negroid  painters,  musicians,  novelists,  botanists,  legists, 
philologists,  philosophers,  mathematicians,  engineers,  and  general 
officers  whose  work  is  done  in  the  white  world  and  in  emulation 
with  the  first  talent  of  Europe  and  America.  Here  on  the  French 
Riviera,  where  this  paper  is  being  finished,  Negro  chauffeurs 
are  much  en  evidence  because  of  their  skilful  and  careful  driving. 

The  Negro  will  probably  die  out  in  Asia  (though  leaving 
in  the  new  peoples  of  Polynesia  and  Malaysia  and  India  an 
ineffaceable  trace  of  his  former  presence  in  the  land)  ;  but  in 
Africa  and  in  America  he  has  a  very  important  part  to  play, 
and  he  may  even  permeate  the  life  of  Europe  in  the  coming 
centuries. 

France  has  become  an  African  Power  of  the  first  magnitude, 
with  a  Negro  army  of  forty  thousand  men.  Britain  and  Germany 
look  more  and  more  to  Africa  for  their  commerce  and  the  raw 
material  of  their  industries.  The  ten  million  Negroes  and 
Negroids  in  the  United  States  occupy  in  that  country  a  position 
of  capital  importance  in  industry  and  agriculture. 


BEGINNING  OF  SLAVERY  1 

Some  time  in  August  of  the  year  1619  a  strange  vessel  entered 
the  mouth  of  the  James  River,  in  what  is  now  the  State  of  Vir 
ginia,  and,  coming  in  with  the  tide,  dropped  anchor  opposite  the 
little  settlement  of  Jamestown.  This  ship,  which  carried  the 
Dutch  flag,  had  the  appearance  of  a  man-of-war,  but  its  mission, 
as  it  turned  out,  was  peaceful  enough,  for  its  purpose  was  trade, 
and  among  other  merchandise  it  carried  twenty  Negro  slaves. 

The  Dutch  man-of-war,  which  brought  the  first  slaves  to  the 
first  permanent  English  settlement  in  the  new  world,  is,  so  far 

1  From  Story  of  the  Negro,  by  Booker  T.  Washington.  Chap.  V.  p.  85. 
Copyright  by  Doubleday,  Page  &  Co.  New  York,  1909. 


THE   NEGRO   PROBLEM  29 

as  the  United  States  is  concerned,  the  first  slave-ship,  for  it  was 
probably  the  first  slave-trader  to  visit  the  North  American  conti 
nent. 

But  the  twenty  Africans  were  not  the  first  slaves  to  reach 
what  is  now  the  territory  of  the  United  States,  and  the  oversea 
African  slave-trade  had  been  in  existence  for  a  century  before 
this  time.  In  fact,  Negro  slaves  were  known  in  ancient  Greece 
and  Rome  and  regular  accounts  of  the  African  slave  trade  with 
Europe  are  in  existence  since  990,  A.D.  In  1422  Portuguese 
ships  brought  back  Moorish  prisoners  from  a  voyage  to  the  Coast 
of  Africa.  As  ransom  the  Portuguese  accepted  a  certain  amount 
of  gold  and  a  number  of  "black  Moors,"  with  curled  hair. 

When  the  Spanish  explorers  and  adventurers  came  to  Amer 
ica  they  brought  many  of  these  Spanish  Negroes  with  them  as, 
servants  and  as  slaves.  It  is  probable  that  a  few  Negroes  were 
sent  out  to  the  West  Indies  as  early  as  1501.  Soon  after  this  date, 
as  shown  by  a  letter  of  King  Ferdinand,  dated  September  15, 
1505,  a  considerable  number  of  slaves  were  introduced  into  Santo 
Domingo.  In  this  letter  the  following  sentence  occurs:  "I  will 
send  you  more  Negro  slaves  as  you  request.  I  think  there  may 
be  a  hundred."  Here  we  have  the  beginning  of  African  slavery 
in  America,  over  a  century  before  its  introduction  in  James 
town,  Va. 

The  records  show  that  Negroes,  in  1516,  worked  with  Balboa 
on  the  Isthmus  of  Panama,  that  Pizarro  the  conqueror  of  Peru, 
and  Las  Casas,  the  Dominican  Bishop  and  missionary,  had  Negro 
bodyguards. 

Negroes  also  accompanied  the  expeditions  of  Vasquez  de 
Ayllon,  Narvaez,  Coronado  and  De  Soto.  With  the  ill-fated  ex 
pedition  of  Narvaez  was  the  Negro  Estevan,  in  English,  Stephen. 
For  eleven  years,  from  1528  to  the  year  of  his  death,  1539,  this 
Negro  Stephen  was  with  the  Spanish  explorers  on  the  mainland 
of  North  America.  He  wandered  hundreds  of  miles  across  what 
is  now  the  southwestern  part  of  the  United  States,  two  centuries 
or  more  before  our  western  frontier  touched  that  section  of  the 
country.  He  was  a  slave  of  one  of  the  survivors  of  the  Narvaez 
expedition  and  must  have  been  a  man  far  above  the  average  type. 
In  one  of  the  folk-tales  of  the  Zuni  Indians  he  lives  today,  after 
a  lapse  of  more  than  three  and  a  half  centuries,  and  one  well- 
known  writer  of  American  history  has  called  him  the  discoverer 
of  Arizona. 


30  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

According  to  the  Spanish  historian,  Oviedo,  Negroes  were 
among  the  settlers  of  the  Spanish  colony  of  Chicora,  in  1526,  on 
what  is  now  the  coast  of  South  Carolina,  and  this,  so  far  as 
known,  was  the  earliest  appearance  of  the  black  man  on  the  soil 
of  the  United  States.  In  1526,  when,  under  Vasques  de  Ayllon, 
eighty-one  years  before  the  English,  the  Spaniards  tried  to  found 
a  settlement  on  the  James  River  near  the  present  site  of  James 
town,  Virginia,  Negro  slaves  were  employed  in  the  work.  An 
insurrection  of  the  Negro  labourers  and  the  death  of  Ayllon  were 
among  the  causes  for  the  failure  of  the  venture.  African  slaves 
accompanied  the  expedition  of  De  Soto  to  Florida  in  1539- 
Negro  slaves  were  settled  at  St.  Augustine,  Florida,  by  Pedro 
Menendez,  in  1565.  These,  however,  were  Spanish  slaves  who 
had  been  trained  as  artisans  and  cultivators  of  the  soil  and  were 
of  a  different  character  from  those  fresh  levies  of  labourers  who 
were  brought  direct  to  America  from  Africa. 

Almost  nothing  is  known  of  the  history  of  the  ship  that 
brought  the  first  slaves,  in  1619,  to  the  settlement  of  Jamestown; 
not  even  its  name  is  remembered.  The  coincidence  has  often 
been  noted,  however,  that  the  Mayflower,  which  is  said  to  have 
brought  to  America  the  first  seeds  of  civil  and  religious  liberty, 
reached  Plymouth  a  year  later,  1620,  so  that  Negro  slavery  is 
older  than  Anglo-Saxon  liberty  on  the  soil  of  the  United  States. 

In  reading  the  early  history  of  the  United  States,  I  have  been 
impressed  with  the  fact  that  religious  animosities  among  Euro 
pean  people  were  largely  responsible  for  the  settlement  of 
America. 

Racial  prejudice,  has  often  been  the  source  of  those  wild  fears 
and  vague  suspicions  by  which  one  class  of  people  in  the  com 
munity  is  sometimes  incited  to  violence  against  another  and 
weaker  class.  In  spite,  however,  of  the  bitter  animosities  that 
once  divided  them,  the  people  of  the  different  religious  creeds 
have  since  learned  to  live  side  by  side  in  peace.  Is  there  any 
sound  reason  why  the  white  man  and  the  black  man,  who,  after 
all,  understand  one  another  here  in  America  pretty  well,  should 
not  do  as  much?  I  do  not  believe  there  is. 

In  1741,  at  the  time  of  the  "Negro  Plot,"  the  population  of 
New  York  City  numbered  10,000,  of  which  2,000  were  Negroes. 
At  this  time  the  number  of  slaves  in  the  whole  colony  of  Massa 
chusetts  did  not  amount  to  more  than  3,000.  The  number  in 
Pennsylvania  had  reached  11,000  in  1754,  but  in  some  of  the  more 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  31 

southerly  colonies  the  number  of  slaves,  particularly  in  propor 
tion  to  the  number  of  inhabitants  was  considerably  larger.  In 
South  Carolina,  for  instance,  the  Negroes  were  at  one  time  in 
the  proportion  of  22  to  12  of  the  white  population.  In  1740  this 
state  had  40,000  slaves. 

In  spite  of  restrictions  that  were  put  upon  it  from  time  to 
time  the  slave-trade  continued  to  flourish  down  to  the  time  of 
the  American  Revolution,  when  for  a  time  it  ceased,  only  to  leap 
into  a  more  vigorous  life  at  the  close  of  the  war.  At  the  begin 
ning  of  the  nineteenth  century  England  held  in  all  her  colonies 
in  the  new  world  800,000  slaves.  France  had  250,000;  Denmark 
27,000 ;  Spain  and  Portugal  600,000 ;  Holland  50,000 ;  Sweden  600. 
There  were  about  900,000  slaves  in  the  United  States  and  about 
2,000,000  in  Brazil. 

The  famous  yacht,  Wanderer,  which  carried  500  slaves  into 
Georgia  in  1858,  is  supposed  to  have  brought  420  slaves  more 
in  1860.  But  as  late  as  1862  a  ship  ran  the  blockade  of  Federal 
ships  and  landed  slaves  in  Mobile.  Far  up  the  river  in  some 
remote  part  of  that  wilderness  of  swamp  and  water  there  still 
may  be  seen,  I  have  been  told,  above  the  surface  of  the  water 
portions  of  the  iron  work  of  the  Lawrence,  which  was  possibly 
the  last  ship  to  bring  slaves  into  the  United  States.  The  ship 
was  burned  to  keep  it  from  falling  into  the  hands  of  the 
"Yankees"  during  the  war,  but  there  are  young  men  in  the 
African  colony  who  still  remember  to  have  played  about  the 
hull  when  they  were  boys.  There  are  still  people  living  in 
Mobile  who  were  brought  over  as  slaves  upon  it  in  1862. 

No  one  will  ever  know  how  many  thousands  of  Africans, 
during  the  progress  of  the  slave-trade,  were  carried  from  their 
homes  in  Africa  to  be  used  as  labourers  in  the  opening  up  of  the 
new  and  wild  country  in  North  and  South  America.  It  has 
been  estimated  that  270,000  slaves  were  brought  into  the  United 
States  between  the  years  1808  and  1860,  from  the  time  that  the 
slave-trade  was  legally  abolished  to  the  time  when  it  practically 
ceased.  In  view  of  the  fact  that  other  estimates  indicate  that 
fifteen  thousand  slaves  were  smuggled  into  the  United  States  in 
1858;  that  at  another  time  fifteen  thousand  slaves  were  brought 
into  Texas  alone  in  one  year,  this  may  be  taken  as  a  low  estimate. 
Even  this  is  no  indication  of  the  number  of  slaves  that  were 
imported  during  this  time  and  before  into  the  West  Indies  and 
into  South  America.  South  America  and  the  West  Indies,  like 


32  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

some  of  the  states  of  the  Far  South,  were  slave-consuming 
countries,  and  it  was  necessary  to  constantly  bring  in  new  levies 
to  keep  up  the  supply. 

I  have  taken  some  pains  to  examine  the  different  estimates 
made  by  different  writers  at  different  periods  of  the  slave-trade 
and  for  different  portions  of  North  and  South  America,  and  I 
have  reached  the  conclusion  that  the  total  number  of  slaves 
landed  in  the  western  world  from  the  beginning  to  the  end  of 
the  slave-trade  cannot  have  been  less  than  twelve  millions,  and 
was  probably  much  more. 


ALIENATION   OF  THE  RACES1 

The  basis  of  the  institution  of  the  Freedmen's  Bureau  was 
the  assumption  stated:  that  the  interests  of  the  Blacks  and  of 
the  Whites  were  necessarily  opposed  to  each  other,  and  that 
the  Blacks  needed  protection  against  the  Whites  in  all  cases. 
Those  who  advised  moderation  and  counseled  with  the  Whites 
were  set  aside. 

No  statement  of  any  Southern  white  person,  however,  pure 
in  life,  lofty  in  morals,  high-minded  in  principle  he  might  be, 
was  accepted.  His  experience,  his  position,  his  character,  counted 
for  nothing.  He  was  assumed  to  be  so  designing  or  so  prejudiced 
that  his  counsel  was  valueless. 

It  is  a  phase  of  the  case  which  has  not  yet  wholly  disappeared, 
and  even  now  we  have  presented  the  singular  spectacle  of 
evidence  being  weighed  rather  by  a  man's  geographical  position 
than  by  his  character  and  his  opportunity  for  knowledge. 

The  conduct  of  the  Freedmen's  Bureau  mislead  the  Negroes 
and  caused  the  first  breach  between  them  and  their  former 
masters. 

On  the  emancipation  of  the  slaves,  the  more  enlightened 
Whites  of  the  South  saw  quite  as  clearly  as  any  person  at 
the  North  could  have  done,  the  necessity  of  some  substitute  for 
the  former  direction  and  training  of  the  Negroes,  and  schools 
were  started  in  many  places  by  the  old  masters  for  the  colored 
children. 

Teachers    and    money   had    come    from    the    North    for    the 

1  From  article,  Mr.  Page's  reply  to  Mr.  Schurz.  Current  Literature. 
36-526-8.  May,  1904. 


THE  NEGRO  PROBLEM  33 

education  of  the  Negroes,  and  many  schools  were  opened.  But 
the  teachers,  at  first,  as  devoted  as  many  of  them  were,  by 
their  unwisdom  alienated  the  good-will  of  the  Whites  and 
frustrated  much  of  the  good  which  they  might  have  accomplished. 
They  might  have  been  regarded  with  distrust  in  any  case,  for 
no  people  look  with  favor  on  the  missionaries  who  come  to 
instruct  them  as  to  matters  of  which  they  feel  they  know  more 
than  the  missionaries,  and  the  South  regarded  jealously  any 
teaching  of  the  Negroes  which  looked  toward  equality.  The 
new  missionaries  went  counter  to  the  deepest  prejudice  of  the 
Southern  people.  They  lived  with  the  Negroes,  consorting  with 
them,  and  appearing  with  them  on  terms  of  apparent  intimacy, 
and  were  believed  to  teach  social  equality,  a  doctrine  which 
was  the  surest  of  all  to  arouse  enmity  then  as  now.  The  result 
was  that  hostility  to  the  public  school  system  sprang  up  for  a 
time.  In  some  sections  violence  was  resorted  to  by  the  rougher 
element,  though  it  was  of  short  duration,  and  was  always  confined 
to  a  small  territory.  Before  long,  however,  this  form  of 
opposition  disappeared  and  the  public  school  system  became  an 
established  fact. 

The  next  step  in  the  alienation  of  the  races  was  the  forma 
tion  of  the  secret  order  of  the  Union  League.  The  meetings 
were  held  at  night,  with  closed  doors,  and  with  pickets  guard 
ing  the  approaches,  and  were  generally  under  the  direction  of 
the  most  hostile  members  of  the  Freedmen's  Bureau.  Without 
going  into  the  question  of  the  charges  that  it  taught  the  most 
inflammatory  doctrines,  it  may  be  asserted  without  fear  of  ques 
tion,  that  its  teaching  was  to  alienate  the  Negroes  from  the 
Whites ;  to  withdraw  them  wholly  from  reliance  on  their  former 
masters,  and  to  drill  into  their  minds  the  imperative  necessity  of 
adherence  to  their  new  leaders,  and  those  whom  they  represented. 

The  Southern  people,  unhappily,  acted  precisely  as  this  ele 
ment  wished  them  to  act;  for  they  were  sore,  unquelled,  and 
angry,  and  they  met  denunciation  with  defiance. 

Knowing  the  imperative  necessities  of  the  time  as  no  North 
erner  could  know  them;  fearing  the  effects  of  turning  loose  a 
slave-population  of  several  millions,  and  ignorant  of  the  deep 
feeling  of  the  Northern  people,  they  hastily  enacted  laws  regu 
lating  labor  which  were  certainly  unwise  in  view  of  the  conse 
quences  that  followed,  and  possibly,  if  enforced,  might  have 
proved  oppressive,  though  they  never  had  a  trial.  Most  of  these 


34  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

laws  were  simply  re-enactments  of  old  vagrant  laws  on  the 
statute  books  and  some  still  stand  on  the  statute  books ;  but  they 
were  enacted  now  expressly  to  control  the  Negroes ;  they  showed 
the  animus  of  the  great  body  of  the  Whites,  and  they  aroused 
a  deep  feeling  of  distrust  and  much  resentment  among  the  North 
erners.  And,  finally,  they  played  into  the  hands  of  the  politicians 
who  were  on  the  lookout  for  any  pretext  to  fasten  their  grip  on 
the  South. 

The  struggle  just  then  became  intensified  between  the  Presi 
dent  and  his  opponents  in  Washington,  with  the  presidency  and 
the  control  of  the  government  as  the  stake,  and  with  the  South 
holding  the  balance  of  power ;  and,  unhappily,  the  Negroes  ap 
peared  to  the  politicians  an  element  that  could  be  utilized  to  ad 
vantage  by  being  made  the  "permanent  allies"  of  what  Mr. 
Stevens,  Mr.  Wade,  and  Mr.  Sumner  used  to  term  "the  party  of 
the  Union." 

So  the  Negro  appeared  to  the  politicians  a  useful  instrument, 
and  to  the  doctrinaires  "a  man  and  brother"  who  was  the  equal 
of  his  former  master,  and,  if  he  were  "armed  with  the  weapon" 
of  the  ballot,  would  be  able  to  protect  himself  and  would  in 
evitably  rise  to  the  full  stature  of  the  White. 

Then  came  the  crowning  error:  the  practical  carrying  out  of 
the  theories  by  infusing  into  the  body  politic  a  whole  race  just 
emerging  from  slavery.  The  most  intelligent  and  conservative 
class  of  the  Whites  were  disfranchised;  the  entire  adult  Negro 
population  were  enfranchised. 

It  is  useless  to  discuss  the  motives  with  which  this  was  done. 
No  matter  what  the  motives,  it  was  a  national  blunder;  in  its 
way  as  great  a  blunder  as  secession. 


GENERAL 

NEGROES  IN  AMERICA1 

The  following  statistics  are  taken  from  what  is  described 
by  Mr.  Samuel  L.  Rogers,  Director  of  Census,  as  the  "most 
comprehensive  statistical  report  ever  published  on  the  subject  to 
which  it  relates." 

The  great  mass  of  the  Negro  population  under  the  jurisdic 
tion  of  the  United  States  is  resident  in  the  United  States.  Of 
the  total  Negro  population  enumerated  in  1910,  numbering 
10,215,482  in  the  United  States,  Porto  Rico,  Hawaii,  Alaska,  and 
in  military  and  naval  service  abroad,  9,827,763,  or  96.2  per  cent., 
were  returned  from  the  States,  and  385,437,  or  3.8  per  cent.,  from 
Porto  Rico.  The  number  returned  from  Hawaii  and  Alaska  is 
relatively  insignificant  During  the  decade,  1900-1910,  Negro 
population  in  the  United  States,  including  that  of  outlying  terri 
tories,  increased  by  more  than  a  million,  and  of  this  increase,  as 
of  the  population  in  1910,  only  a  small  proportion  was  in  the  out 
lying  possessions.  The  rate  of  increase  in  the  States,  11.2  per 
cent.,  considerably  exceeds  the  corresponding  rate  of  6  per  cent, 
in  Porto  Rico,  while  the  higher  rates  recorded  for  Hawaii  and 
Alaska  represent  very  small  absolute  population  changes.  Ac 
cording  to  the  same  government  census  re*port  the  percentage  of 
Negroes  in  the  population  of  States  runs  as  follows : 

Less  than  one  per  cent,  in  Washington,  Oregon,  California, 
Montana,  Idaho,  Nevada,  Utah,  New  Mexico,  North  Dakota, 
South  Dakota,  Nebraska,  Minnesota,  Iowa,  Wisconsin,  Michigan, 
Vermont,  New  Hampshire^  Maine.  One  to  five  per  cent,  in 
Arizona,  Colorado,  Wyoming,  Kansas,  Missouri,  Illinois,  Indiana, 
Ohio,  Pennsylvania,  New  York,  Massachusetts,  Rhode  Island. 
Connecticut,  New  Jersey.  Five  to  twelve  and  one-half  per  cent. 
in  Oklahoma,  Kentucky,  West  Virginia.  Twelve  and  one-half 
to  twenty-five  per  cent,  in  Texas,  Tennessee,  Delaware,  Mary 
land.  Twenty-five  to  thirty-seven  and  one-half  per  cent,  in 
Arkansas,  Virginia,  North  Carolina.  Thirty-seven  and  one-half 

1  Literary    Digest.     63:40.     December    20,    1919. 


36  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

to  fifty  per  cent,  in  Louisiana,  Alabama,  Georgia.    Fifty  per  cent, 
and  over  in  Florida,  Mississippi,  and  South  Carolina. 


SOME  ADVANTAGES  THE  NEGRO  ENJOYS  IN 
THE  UNITED  STATES  * 

The  Negro  has  some  disadvantages  in  the  United  States,  but 
he  has  also  some  advantages.  So  much  has  been  said  about  the 
disadvantages  that  the  Negro  suffers  in  this  country,  because  of 
his  color  and  his  previous  condition  of  servitude,  that  perhaps  it 
will  not  be  out  of  place  to  mention  some  of  the  advantages  he 
enjoys. 

In  writing  thus  I  do  not  intend  to  minimize  in  any  way  the 
difficulties  nor  excuse  the  injustices  which  Negroes  as  a  race 
frequently  have  to  suffer.  I  intend  merely  to  point  out  that  in 
spite  of  our  difficulties,  at  a  time  when  the  Negro  is  making 
real  progress  in  this  country,  there  is  no  reason  why  either  the 
Negro  people  or  their  friends  should  become  discouraged.  In 
my  opinion,  it  would  be  a  fatal  mistake  at  this  time  to  sow 
doubts  and  suspicions  among  the  masses  of  my  people,  which 
might  lead  them  to  believe  that  the  majority  of  American  people 
in  any  part  of  the  country  do  not  mean  to  do  them  justice,  or 
which  might  teach  them  to  seek  for  enemies  among  those  who 
are  trying  to  be  their  friends. 

The  world  has  not  always  dealt  justly  with  us  as  a  people. 
There  are  frequently  times  when  the  world  has  taken  advantage 
of  our  weakness  to  impose  upon  us  unnecessary  hardships.  But 
it  is  a  great  thing  for  a  people  to  have  justice  on  its  side.  It 
is  a  great  advantage  to  a  people  that  is  struggling  to  get  on  its 
feet  to  have  its  name  identified  with  a  cause  that  commends 
itself  to  the  best  and  wisest  men  and  women  in  the  community. 
The  Negro  race  has  had  that  advantage  in  its  struggle  in  this 
country  hitherto,  and  it  should  take  care  that  it  does  not  lose 
it.  In  a  very  peculiar  sense  it  can  be  said  that  every  Negro 
in  the  United  States  who  has  made  himself  in  any  way  useful 
to  the  community  has  widened  the  field  of  opportunity  for  the 
other  members  of  his  race,  contributed  something  to  the  solution 
of  a  difficult  national  problem,  and  gained  for  himself  the 
gratitude  of  all  those  who  wish  well  of  our  country.  We  may 

1  From  article,  American  Negro  of  Today,  by  Booker  T.  Washington. 
Putnam's  Monthly.  3:67-70.  October,  1907. 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  37 

as  a  race  congratulate  ourselves  that  we  live  in  a  country  whose 
fundamental  principle  is — "All  men  up,  no  man  down." 

We  should  also  recognize  the  fact  that  probably  to  no  race, 
white  or  black,  which  has  risen  from  a  position  of  slavery 
serfdom,  has  been  granted,  in  so  short  a  time,  so  large  a  measure  j 
of  freedom,  or  so  great  an  opportunity  for  advancement,  as  isj 
now  enjoyed  by  the  American  Negro.  Germany  did  not  abolish 
serfdom  until  1807,  and  it  was  only  gradually,  after  its  abolition, 
that  the  ballot  was  granted  the  men  who  were  formerly  bound 
to  the  soil.  It  was  for  taking  part  in  the  political  struggle  that 
did  away  with  the  last  vestiges  of  this  serfdom  that  Carl 
Schurz  was  compelled  to  flee  to  America.  Even  today,  I  am 
told,  the  German  laborer  does  not  have  the  same  opportunities 
to  secure  an  education  and  acquire  property  that  his  brothers 
enjoy  in  America. 

Let  me  recall  the  fact  that  the  Russian  Government  did  not 
abolish  serfdom  throughout  the  empire  until  1861,  just  two 
years  before  the  signing  of  the  emancipation  proclamation  in 
America;  yet  today,  if  we  are  to  credit  reports  that  come  from 
that  country,  the  position  of  the  Russian  peasant  is  vastly  worse, 
in  spite  of  the  good  intentions  of  the  government,  than  that 
of  the  Negro  in  America  has  ever  been,  before  or  since  the 
war.  Alexander  II.  of  Russia  criticised  the  abolition  of  slavery 
in  America  because  the  freedmen  were  not  given  land,  as  were 
the  Russian  peasants  when  they  were  freed.  And  yet  the 
condition  of  the  Russian  peasant  seems  to  have  grown  steadily 
worse  in  freedom.  On  the  other  hand  there  is  no  question  but 
that  the  condition  of  the  Negro  has  steadily  grown  better. 
Statistics  show  that  there  has  been  a  gradual  decrease  in  the 
value  of  farm  products  and  of  the  farm  equipment  among  the 
peasants  of  Russia.  The  Negro,  starting  with  nothing,  now 
owns  an  area  of  land  in  this  country  nearly  as  large  as  Belgium 
and  Holland  combined.  Unquestionably  this  is  due  to  the 
greater  freedom  and  the  greater  opportunity  that  the  Negro 
enjoys  in  this  country  over  that  of  the  peasant  in  Russia. 

In  the  United  States  the  Negro  has  never  starved.  The 
Russian  famine  is  said  to  be  more  intense  this  year  than  it  was 
in  1891,  when  650,000  people  died.  And  these  famines,  according 
to  a  recent  writer,  are  directly  due  to  the  oppression  of  these 
people  by  their  former  masters,  and  to  the  special  burdens  laid 
upon  them  by  the  government. 

It  is  sometimes  a  subject  for  complaint,  in  this  country,  that 


38  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

the  two  races  are  separated  on  trains,  in  the  schools,  and  in 
other  places.  No  doubt  this  is  a  disadvantage  in  so  far  as  it 
leads  to  discrimination  against  Negroes,  and  this  is  true 
particularly  in  regard  to  the  schools  in  the  South,  where  there 
is  a  disposition  to  deny  them  the  same  opportunities  in  the 
schools  that  are  granted  to  the  white  people.  But  this  division 
of  the  races  is  an  advantage  to  us  as  a  people,  in  so  far  as  it 
permits  us  to  become  the  teachers  of  our  own  people.  No 
better  discipline  can  be  given  to  a  people  than  that  which  they 
gain  by  being  their  own  teachers.  They  can  have  no  greater 
opportunity  than  that  of  developing  within  themselves  the  ideals 
and  the  leadership  which  are  to  make  them  not  merely  in  law, 
but  in  fact,  the  masters  of  their  own  fortunes. 

It  is  sometimes  spoken  of  as  a  special  hardship  that  the  world 
looks  upon  us,  because  of  our  color,  as  a  people  separate  and 
apart,  constituting  a  special  problem  in  the  body-politic.  For 
my  part,  I  can  only  repeat  in  regard  to  this  what  I  have  said 
elsewhere :  "I  would  find  no  interest  in  living  in  an  age  when 
there  were  no  weak  parts  of  the  human  family  to  be  helped, 
no  wrongs  to  be  righted.  Men  grow  strong  in  proportion  as 
they  reach  down  and  help  others  up.  The  farther  down  they 
reach  in  assisting  and  encouraging  backward  and  unpopular 
races,  the  greater  strength  do  they  gather." 

I  cannot  regard  it  as  a  misfortune  to  be  identified  with  a 
people  that  has  its  place  to  make  in  the  world.  I  know 
people  and  believe  in  them,  and  am  glad  to  have  my  share  in 
the  great  task  of  building  up  the  race  to  which  I  belong.  I  was 
never  more  proud  of  being  a  Negro  that  I  am  today.  If  I  had 
the  privilege  of  re-entering  the  world,  and  the  Great  Spirit 
should  ask  me  to  choose  the  people  and  the  race  to  which  I 
should  belong,  I  would  answer,  "Make  me  an  American  Negro." 


PSYCHOLOGY   OF   THE   NEGRO— AN   EXPERI 
MENTAL  STUDY  * 

Interest  in  the  psychology  of  the  Negro  has  produced  a 
voluminous  literature,  but  the  knowledge  to  be  obtained  from 
a  reading  of  it  is  not  commensurately  extensive.  It  may  be 
not  unjustly  said  that  until  what  is  practically  the  present  time 

1  From  article  by  George  Oscar  Ferguson,  Jr.  Archives  of  Psychology, 
v.  5,  serial  no.  36:1-138.  1915- 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  39 

our  information  as  to  the  Negro's  intellectual  characteristics 
has  been  almost  wholly  a  product  of  varying  individual  opinion 
and  speculation.  Here  and  there  have  appeared  works  of  value 
based  upon  study  and  experience  and  presenting  carefully  drawn 
conclusions.  But  for  the  most  part  the  literature  consists  of 
articles  which  have  grown  out  of  limited  and  untrustworthy 
observation,  and  of  articles  which  have  attacked  the  problem 
from  the  standpoint  of  preconceived  theories  and  have  reached 
conclusions  a  priori  from  the  premises  thus  held.  There  has 
been  no  settled  body  of  doctrine  concerning  the  vastly  important 
matter  of  the  mental  capacity  of  the  Negro.  One  man  has 
held  that  the  Negro  is  the  equal  of  the  white  in  intellect;  another 
has  held  that  a  great  intellectual  gulf  separates  the  two  races. 
And  there  have  been  many  varieties  of  views  between  these 
two  'extremes.  There  have  been  no  facts  agreed  upon  and 
consequently  no  reliable  generalizations.  Yet  social  practices  of 
far-reaching  importance  have  been  based  upon  these  varying 
views.  Some  school  systems  have  advocated  giving  precisely 
the  same  training  to  precisely  the  same  radical  minds;  other 
systems  have  advocated  a  differentiation  of  school  work  to  meet 
the  needs  of  the  mentally  different  races;  the  advocates  of  both 
views  have  put  their  beliefs  into  practice.  Many  social  and 
political  considerations  have  of  course  had  their  bearing  upon 
these  educational  matters,  but  certainly  ideas  as  to  the  nature  of 
the  mind  of  the  Negro  have  not  been  without  influence.  And 
the  social  and  political  considerations  themselves  have  had  a 
psychological  background. 

In  the  last  few  years  a  number  of  objective  studies  of  the 
intellect  of  the  Negro  have  been  made;  and  they  constitute  a 
definite  step  toward  the  scientific  answer  to  the  vexed  question 
upon  which  they  bear.  It  is  the  purpose  of  the  present  chapter 
to  review  the  experimental  work  which  has  been  done  in  this 
limited  field  of  race  psychology  and  also  some  of  that  which  has 
not  been  experimental. 

K*  By  way  of  summary  of  the  various  considerations  which  have 
come  to  light  in  this  study;  may  we  say  that  the  average  per 
formance  of  the  colored  population  of  this  country  in  such  intel 
lectual  work  as  that  represented  by  the  tests  of  higher  capacity, 
appears  to  be  only  about  three-fourths  as  efficient  as  the  per 
formance  of  whites  of  the  same  amount  of  training.  It  is  prob 
able,  indeed,  that  this  estimate  is  too  high  rather  than  too  low. 


40  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

The  groups  of  whites  and  Negroes  studied  are  not  typical  of  the 
white  and  colored  populations  in  general;  their  ability  is  un 
doubtedly  considerably  above  the  average.  But  the  Negroes  were 
probably  farther  above  their  racial  average  than  were  the  whites. 
If  one  were  to  test  the  capacity  of  the  unselected  masses  of  Ne 
groes,  with  their  much  smaller  percentage  of  white  blood,  and 
make  a  comparison  with  unselected  masses  of  whites,  the  results 
would  almost  certainly  reveal  greater  racial  differences  than 
those  found  herein.  *• 

In  the  present  state  of  the  advancement  of  science  it  does 
not  seem  possible  to  make  adequate  tests  of  those  vastly  im 
portant  qualities  which  are  included  in  the  feeling  and  dynamic, 
rather  than  in  the  intellectual  side  of  mental  life.  It  is  the  com 
mon  opinion  that  the  Negro  differs  more  from  the  white  in  such 
traits  than  in  intellect  proper.  His  emotions  are  generally  be 
lieved  to  be  strong  and  volatile  in  their  manifestations;  whether 
this  is  due  to  their  intrinsic  nature  or  to  a  lack  of  restraint,  is 
the  untouched  problem.  Instability  of  character  is  ascribed  to 
the  Negro,  involving  a  lack  of  foresight,  an  improvidence,  a  lack 
of  persistence,  small  power  of  serious  initiative,  a  tendency  to 
be  content  with  immediate  satisfactions,  deficient  ambition.  But 
evidence  that  such  characteristics  constitute  a  true  racial  differ 
ence  cannot  be  called  conclusive,  and  the  psychological  causes 
underlying  them  have  not  been  adequately  investigated.  Along 
with  high  emotional  and  instability  of  character,  defective  mo 
rality  is  held  to  be  a  Negro  characteristic.  This  is  as  subject  to 
debate  as  are  the  other  qualities,  though  it  is  apparently  sup 
ported  by  social  statistics. 

The  available  evidence  indicates  that  in  the  so-called  lower 
traits  there  is  no  great  difference  between  the  Negro  and  the 
white.  In  motor  capacity  there  is  probably  no  appreciable  racial 
difference.  In  sense  capacity,  in  perceptive  and  discriminative 
ability,  there  is  likewise  a  practical  equality.  It  is  in  the 
central  elaborative  powers  upon  which  thought  more  directly 
depends  that  differences  exist,  not  in  the  simpler  recep 
tive  and  discharging  functions.  It  seems  as  though  the  white  type 
has  attained  a  level  of  higher  development,  based  upon  the  com 
mon  elementary  capacities,  which  the  Negro  has  not  reached  to 
the  same  degree.  From  the  nature  of  the  mental  differences,  one 
would  infer  that  such  neural  differences  as  may  be  found  will 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  41 

probably  be  mainly  in  the  constitution  of  the  cortical  neurones, 
rather  than  elsewhere  in  the  nervous  system. 

The  educational  significance  of  the  available  facts  is  difficult 
to  determine.  The  Negro's  intellectual  deficiency  is  registered 
in  the  retardation  percentages  of  the  schools  as  well  as  in  mental 
tests.  And  in  view  of  all  the  evidence  it  does  not  seem  possible 
to  raise  the  scholastic  attainment  of  the  Negro  to  an  equality  with 
that  of  the  white.  It  is  probable  that  no  expenditure  of  time  or  of 
money  would  accomplish  this  end,  since  education  cannot  create  \ 
mental  power,  but  can  only  develop  that  which  is  innate. 

The  movement  toward  industrial  education  for  the  Negro 
finds  sanction  in  the  studies  of  his  psychology.  Without  great 
ability  in  the  processes  of  abstract  thought,  the  Negro  is  yet  very  ! 
capable  in  the  sensory  and  motor  powers  which  are  involved  in 
manual  work.  And  economy  would  indicate  that  training  should 
be  concentrated  upon  those  capacities  which  promise  the  best  re 
turn  for  the  educative  effort  expended.  Social  conditions,  of 
course,  have  been  the  main  incentive  to  the  growth  of  industrial 
education  among  Negroes,  and  in  themselves  they  are  sufficient 
reason  for  emphasizing  an  intensely  practical  training.  But  the 
mental  nature  of  the  Negro  gives  reason  for  believing  that  this 
sort  of  education  is  the  only  one  which  will  avoid  great  waste. 
Diminishing  educational  returns  will  be  more  serious  in  the  intel 
lectual  than  in  the  industrial  education  of  the  Negro. 
But  while  it  thus  appears  that  for  the  colored  population  as  a 
whole  a  manual  is  more  practicable  than  a  literary  education,  it  • 
must  not  be  overlooked  that  there  are  individual  colored  persons 
of  great  ability.  The  widely  held  doctrine  that  the  Negro's  men 
tal  growth  comes  to  a  comparative  standstill  at  adolescence  does 
not  find  corroboration  in  the  results  of  tests.  The  groups  so  far 
tested,  indeed,  show  that  after  adolescence  the  Negro  more  nearly 
approaches  the  white  than  before.  This  is  probably  due  to  the 
fact  that  the  adolescent  Negroes  tested  are  a  more  closely  selected 
group  than  those  who  have  not  reached  adolescence.  The  adoles 
cent  Negroes  in  the  schools  have  more  white  blood  in  them.  And 
racial  differences  at  adolescence  may  exist  in  the  feeling  and 
dynamic  sides  of  mental  life,  which  have  not  been  tested.  If 
there  are  such  differences  they  will  most  likely  appear  just  here. 
But  so  far  as  has  been  demonstrated,  the  Negro's  intellectual  de 
velopment  proceeds  as  rapidly  after  puberty  as  does  that  of  the 


42  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

white.  Then,  too,  the  variability  of  the  Negroes  and  the  over 
lapping  of  ability  in  the  two  races,  make  it  necessary  to  expect 
very  able  colored  persons  to  be  found  in  every  large  group.  In 
the  main,  the  most  capable  colored  individuals  will  be  mulattoes, 
although  there  are  fewer  mulattoes  than  pure  Negroes. 

There  are  few  more  controversial  subjects  than  that  of  the 
outlook  for  the  Negro  race  in  America,  and  it  is  not  within  the 
province  of  this  monograph  to  attempt  a  discussion  of  the  topic. 
But  it  may  not  be  out  of  place  to  mention  certain  considerations 
that  have  presented  themselves.  Conclusions  concerning  the 
Negro's  possibilities  in  this  country  are  frequently  drawn  from  a 
study  of  the  various  small  Negro  republics,  such  as  Haiti,  Santo 
Domingo  and  Liberia,  and  opinions  so  arrived  at  are  not  without 
their  value.  Yet  there  are  differences  between  the  position  of  the 
American  Negro  and  that  of  the  Negro  in  the  isolated  states  in 
question.  It  should  be  noticed  that  the  number  of  American  Ne 
groes  is  larger  than  the  number  in  any  of  the  Negro  republics. 
Progress  depends  upon  the  size  of  a  group  as  well  as  upon  its 
average  capacity.  Other  things  being  equal,  the  larger  group 
will  produce  more  very  able  individuals,  and  such  individuals,  as 
was  previously  pointed  out,  furnish  the  ideas  and  the  inspiration 
for  the  whole  group.  And  the  American  Negro  is  in  much  closer 
contact  with  the  white  race  than  are  the  inhabitants  of  the  inde 
pendent  Negro  countries.  This  contact  gives  him  the  advantage 
of  white  encouragement,  achievement,  example  and  control,  and 
enables  him  to  appropriate  to  his  own  use  the  products  of  white 
genius.  Races,  or  nations,  between  which  there  is  free  intercom 
munication  make  greater  progress  than  do  isolated  peoples,  for 
the  results  of  the  ability  of  one  race  are  more  readily  taken  over 
and  incorporated  into  the  life  of  the  other.  Hence  we  may 
reasonably  expect  the  colored  people  of  America  to  show  a  higher 
type  of  civilization  than  those  of  their  race  who  are  differently 
situated,  even  though  the  native  ability  of  the  Negro  is  every 
where  the  same. 

In  this  connection  Thorndike  writes  as  follows :  "The  orig 
ination  of  advances  in  civilization  is  a  measure  of  ability,  but 
the  abilities  that  have  originated  them  have  probably  been 
confined  to  a  very  few  men.  A  race  that  originated  none  of 
them  may  now  possess  them  all.  Even  if  a  race  has  been 
completely  isolated,  its  civilization  has  been  originated  by  only 
a  few  of  its  members;  and  the  chance  of  men  of  great  gifts 


THE   NEGRO   PROBLEM  43 

being  born  is  the  result  not  only  of  the  central  tendency  of  a 
race  and  its  variability,  but  also  of  its  size.  Other  things  being 
equal,  there  is  a  far  greater  chance  of  the  birth  of  a  man  of 
great  ability  in  a  tribe  of  a  million  than  in  one  of  a  thousand. 
Since  one  such  man  may  add  to  the  knowledge  and  improve  the 
habits  of  the  entire  group  regardless  of  its  size,  civilization 
will  progress  more  rapidly  in  large  than  in  small  groups,  in  a 
condition  of  isolation. 

Probably  the  greatest  difference  between  the  American 
Negro  and  the  members  of  his  race  in  the  relatively  isolated 
Negro  communities  elsewhere,  will  eventually  be  found  in  the 
greater  amount  of  white  blood  which  the  American  Negro 
will  possess.  In  the  course  of  generations,  if  the  present  or 
a  similar  rate  of  white  admixture  continues,  there  will  be  few 
if  any  pure  Negroes  remaining  in  the  United  States.  The 
whole  of  our  colored  population  will  be  Mulatto,  and  as  time 
passes  the  proportion  of  white  blood  will  increase.  This  will 
be  inevitable  from  the  fact  that  white  blood  once  infused  into 
the  Negro  community  will  remain  there  and  be  continued  by 
intermarriage  among  the  Negroes  from  generation  to  generation. 
The  white  blood  in  a  mulatto  does  not  return  to  the  white  race 
through  intermarriage;  the  white  stock  will  remain  pure.  It 
is  among  the  Negroes  that  a  Mulatto's  white  inheritance  is 
diffused.  Such  a  continued  raising  of  the  amount  of  white 
blood  in  the  Negroes  is  of  course  dependent  upon  a  continuance 
of  some  degree  of  race  intermixture ;  but  there  is  no  valid 
reason  for  believing  that  intermixture  will  wholly  cease. 

This  consideration  will  in  time  work  a  great  change  in  the 
race  problem  in  America,  and  it  may  both  simplify  and  complicate 
the  interracial  situation.  On  the  one  hand,  the  Negro  will  have 
greater  ability,  and  there  will  be  less  difference  between  the 
races.  The  standard  of  colored  achievement  will  be  higher. 
But  on  the  other  hand,  race  friction  may  be  increased.  The 
Mulatto  is  not  as  tractable  or  as  submissive  to  white  domination 
as  is  the  pure  Negro.  He  thinks  and  feels  more  nearly  as  does 
the  white  man.  And  he  cannot  be  content  with  the  social 
restrictions  that  are  thrown  around  him.  -In  our  own  time  these 
tendencies  seem  to  be  already  evident.  The  very  considerable 
progress  that  the  Negro  has  made  has  been  in  large  measure  due 
to  Mulattoes.  And  it  is  mainly  the  Mulattoes  who  have  so 
largely  done  away  with  that  type  of  Negro  which  was  content 


44  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

to  regard  itself  as  the  natural  dependent  of  the  whites.  It  seems 
probable,  indeed,  that  the  excessive  criminal  and  immoral 
tendencies  sometimes  charged  to  the  Mulatto  may  be  due  if 
they  exist  at  all,  to  the  fact  of  his  recognition  of  his  ability  and 
his  resentment  at  the  position  of  inferiority  in  which  he  is 
placed. 


SERVING   NEW  YORK'S   BLACK   CITY1 

It  is  in  the  community  life  of  a  great  city  that  the  library 
has  its  most  challenging  opportunity.  The  more  homogeneous 
such  a  life  the  greater  is  the  opportunity  of  becoming  part  of 
it,  since  all  currents  flow  together,  drawing  one  into  the  common 
whirl  of  experience  while  conflicting  currents  of  thought  and 
habit  keep  one  tossing  about  on  the  surface. 

One  of  the  most  interesting  and  least-known  of  such  com 
munities  is  New  York's  black  city,  extending  approximately 
from  Eighth  Avenue  to  the  Harlem  River  and  from  One  hun 
dred  thirtieth  to  One  hundred  fiftieth  Streets.  Picture  to  your 
selves  a  great  town  of  some  one  hundred  fifty  thousand  people, 
with  a  few  alien  whites  as  scattered  shopkeepers,  and  old  resi 
dents,  clinging  to  their  homes.  This  city  has  its  own  churches, 
its  theaters,  its  newspapers,  its  clubs  and  social  life.  There  are 
three  churches,  each  with  a  parish  numbering  more  than  two 
thousand,  in  Harlem,  and  at  least  thirty  others  varying  in  size. 
The  Sunday  School  of  Mother  Zion  Church  has  a  membership 
roll  of  seven  hundred,  and  an  average  attendance  of  five  hun 
dred.  All  denominations,  from  Baptist  to  Episcopalian,  are 
represented ;  there  are  a  large  Catholic  parish,  several  Jewish 
churches,  and  a  number  of  Eastern  and  African  sects. 

The  theaters  have  their  own  colored  actors,  and  increasingly 
one  sees  posters  featuring  colored  artists.  There  are  colored 
Y.  M.  C.  A.  and  Y.  W.  C.  A.,  the  latter  with  an  entire  resident 
apartment  house.  In  "Liberty  Hall,"  Harlem's  town  hall,  of  a 
Sunday,  immense  mass  meetings  are  held.  Does  white  New 
York  know  what  is  discussed  there?  Harlem  supports  six 
colored  newspapers  recognized  as  representing  Negro  thought, 

1  From  article  by  Ernestine  Rose,  Librarian,  issth  Street  Branch, 
New  York  Public  Library.  Library  Journal.  46:255-8.  Mr.  15,  '21. 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  45 

as  well  as  a  number  of  lesser  sheets.  This  Negro  world  is 
swarming  with  clubs,  societies,  organizations  of  sorts,  for  the 
support  of  religious  or  political  movements,  as  for  instance,  the 
Bahai  faith,  or  Marcus  Garvey's  "Back  to  Africa"  propaganda, 
as  likewise  for  the  mutual  betterment  or  advancement  of 
members. 

What  gives  all  this  point  is  the  fact  that  these  activities 
are  sponsored  and  managed,  to  a  large  extent,  by  colored  people. 
The  offices  of  the  Urban  League  are  filled  by  Negroes,  altho 
both  races  are  represented  on  the  national  board  of  directors. 
The  colored  branches  of  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  and  the  Y.  W.  C.  A.  are 
managed  entirely  by  colored  people.  The  newspaper  editors  are 
Negroes,  and  represent  Negro  thought  exclusively.  The  clergy 
are  Negroes,  except  in  the  case  of  the  Catholic  parish.  On  the 
corner  of  One  hundred  thirty-fifth  Street  and  Lenox  Avenue 
a  bank  has  just  been  erected,  which  is  financed  by  colored 
capital,  and  is  under  colored  control.  A  large  new  theater 
also  financed  by  Negro  funds  is  being  erected.  The  read 
ing  world  knows  of  Marcus  Garvey  and  his  Black  Star 
steamship  line.  Increasingly,  real  estate  is  coming  under  black 
control.  Even  the  police  and  fire  stations  have  colored  men 
on  their  forces,  altho  the  city-managed  activities  within  the 
district  are  the  most  reluctant  in  succumbing  to  the  inevitable 
tide.  Until  a  few  months  ago  the  library  had  no  colored 
assistants.  Of  the  three  public  schools  in  this  community  two 
have  colored  teachers,  one  has  fourteen  on  a  teaching  force  of 
sixty-one,  the  other  has  only  one.  In  this  school,  which  faces 
the  library  on  One  hundred  thirty-fifth  Street,  the  registration 
is  something  over  twenty-one  hundred,  of  whom  two  thousand 
are  colored.  The  community  has  also  its  literary  and  artistic 
life.  Several  artists  of  real  worth  work  in  Harlem,  and  there 
is  a  large  music  school,  the  colored  director  of  which  has  given 
recitals  at  Carnegie  Hall. 

All  this  seems  to  spell  homogeneity.  Yet,  tho  this  great 
group  is  held  together  by  the  tie  of  color,  and  by  the  same  bond 
is  separated  from  its  white  neighbors,  within  itself  it  is  crossed 
and  divided  by  many  conflicting  lines  of  though,  belief  and 
hope. 

The  most  deeply-cut  is  that  of  nationality.  Nearly  half  this 
population  is  foreign,  from  the  British  or  Spanish  West  Indies 
or  South  America.  From  the  British  West  Indies  comes  an 


46  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

educated,  thinking  and  ambitious  group,  interpenetrated  by  white 
blood,  unused  to  the  color  line  and  inexpressibly  galled  by  it. 
They  are  perhaps,  the  library's  best  readers,  but  they  form  a 
separate,  alien  group,  a  bitter,  proud  people.  Those  from  the 
Spanish  possessions  and  from  South  America  form  as  alien  a 
group,  but  one  which  is  indifferent  rather  than  antagonistic. 
Both  their  language  and  their  color  exclude  them  from  much  of 
American  life.  Those  from  the  Islands,  unused  to  participation 
in  political  life,  do  not  feel  the  need  of  naturalization  privileges. 
They  came  to  America  for  a  livelihood,  and  that  end  accom 
plished,  they  are  satisfied  with  their  own  native  life  with  its 
clubs  and  gambling  groups,  its  freedom.  Police  estimates  place 
the  number  of  such  alien  citizens  as  from  twenty  thousand  to 
thirty  thousand  in  this  district. 

A  second  line  of  division  is  that  of  political  thought.  All 
colored  people  are  not  thinking  alike  about  their  problems,  or 
their  future.  Distinct  schools  of  thought  exist,  from  that  of 
the  late  Booker  T.  Washington,  and  his  successor,  Dr.  R.  R. 
Moton,  of  Tuskegee  Institute,  who  believe  in  the  slow  advance 
ment  of  their  race  to  equal  opportunity  thru  an  initial  industrial 
training;  to  that  incredible  movement,  or  dream,  rather,  of 
Marcus  Garvey.  This  great  leader,  who  has  gathered  under 
his  banners  some  four  million  colored  people  all  over  the  world, 
stands  for  uncompromising  race  integrity,  a  return  to  Africa, 
and  the  establishment  there  of  a  black  racial  and  political  life. 
Between  these  two  extremes  is  a  smaller  group  which  believes 
in  equal  opportunity  along  all  lines,  based  on  individual  merit. 
The  most  distinguished  exponent  of  this  belief  is  Dr.  W.  E. 
B.  DuBois,  president  of  the  National  Association  for  the  Ad 
vancement  of  colored  People,  and  author  of  several  powerful 
and  arresting  books. 

Such  is  a  very  sketchy  picture  of  colored  Harlem,  New 
York's  black  city. 

The  Negro  editors  are  among  the  best  friends  of  the  library 
and  it  is  thru  them,  the  social  workers,  and  other  prominent 
individuals  that  the  library  is  extending  its  influence  slowly 
but  surely  thru  the  various  strata  of  Negro  life.  That  such 
strata  exist  I  hope  I  have  indicated.  Those  who  wish  to  work 
effectively  among  Negroes  must  realize  that  besides  the  groups 
already  mentioned,  there  exists  among  them  a  stable,  very  real 
social  life,  quite  unlike  "culled  sassiety,"  and  as  unknown  to  most 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  47 

whites  as  "darkest  Africa"  was  not  long  ago.  The  library 
must  gain  the  interest  and  support  of  this  social  and  professional, 
often  wealthy,  group  before  it  can  hope  to  become  an  integral 
part  of  Negro  life. 

These  people  are  among  our  best  readers,  and  the  books 
they  read  are  similar  to  those  of  any  cosmopolitan  reading 
public.  They  are  eagerly  interested  and  curious  about  what  the 
great  world  is  doing,  and  keep  closely  in  touch  with  it.  As 
for  the  reading  habits  of  the  Negro  group  at  large,  poetry  and 
music  are  immensely  popular,  but  so  also  are  philosophy, 
psychology  and  the  speculative  sciences. 

If  there  is  one  quality  which  is  universally  characteristic 
of  the  Negro  in  reading,  as  in  all  else,  it  is  his  love  of  the 
beautiful,  as  he  conceives  it.  Rudimentary  as  it  often  is,  it 
furnishes  the  very  best  basis  for  the  teaching  of  good  reading, 
and,  I  may  add,  of  ethics  and  good  conduct.  The  children,  and 
adults  too,  respond  to  good  manners  because  they  are  beautiful. 
I  have  stood  on  our  stairway  and  said  gently  to  a  tumultuous 
group  of  children  pelting  up  towards  me,  "Good  afternoon," 
and  have  seen  them  quiet  instantly,  smile  a  happy  response, 
and  walk  sedately  on.  A  frown  and  harsh  words  would  have 
caused  whoops  of  derision.  By  the  same  token,  Negroes  want 
what  is  "best"  in  literature,  even  if  they  do  not  always  understand 
it.  In  this  sense  they  are  ambitious,  rather  than  in  the  intel 
lectual  or  material  way  of  the  Jews. 

An  index  to  the  constantly  increasing  race  consciousness 
among  Negroes  is  their  intense  interest  in  books  by  members  of 
their  own  race,  and  in  works  on  the  Negro,  his  history,  race 
achievements,  and  present  problems.  Dr.  DuBois'  "Dark  Water," 
and  Lothrop  Stoddard's  "Rising  Tide  of  Color,"  are  almost 
equally  popular.  Books  exploiting  the  old-time  "darky,"  with  his 
dialect  and  his  antics,  as  for  instance,  E.  K.  Means,  will  be  read, 
but  they  are  resented  by  the  thinking,  self-conscious  group.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  "Uncle  Remus"  stories,  and  Dunbar's  poems, 
are  widely  read  and  very  popular.  They  represent  the  plantation 
Negro  in  his  life  with  sincerity  and  loving  faithfulness. 

A  recent  development  in  the  thinking  of  Negroes  is  evidenced 
by  their  interest  in  economic  and  social  literature.  The  economic 
unrest  is  seeping  in  among  our  colored  people,  and  some  of  the 
most  intelligent  questions  I  have  ever  heard  have  been  asked 
after  the  lectures  at  our  Thursday  night  forum,  devoted  to  social 


48  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

and  racial  problems.     So  much  for  Mr.  Madison  Grant's  asser 
tion,   "Negroes  never  become  socialists." 

I  trust  that  what  I  have  said  indicates  that  in  working  among 
Negroes,  as  in  all  other  racial  groups,  one's  preconceived  opinions 
die  of  malnutrition !  One  is  naturally  slow  to  form  new  ones, 
but  gradually  I  am  forming  several  conclusions  about  the  Negro. 
Most  deeply  I  am  impressed  with  his  tremendous  reserve  power, 
which,  when  fully  called  forth,  will  lead  to  ends  we  cannot  now 
conceive.  This  is  shown  in  his  wonderful  patience,  in  his  per 
sistent  grip  on  what  is  fine  and  beautiful,  and  in  his  deep  sense 
of  humor,  which  breeds  a  curious  sort  of  broad-mindedness.  I 
listened  with  wonder  to  James  Weldon  Johnson's  account  of  the 
Haitian  outrages,  and  to  the  questions  which  followed,  pertinent, 
detached,  many  satirical,  but  none  hot  or  bitter.  The  impulsive 
ness,  high  spirits,  and  "tomfoolery,"  so  often  evident  are  merely 
effervescence  on  the  surface  of  a  deep,  slowly  moving  stream, 
surely  gathering  in  volume.  Such  is  my  conviction.  Another  is 
that  the  race,  in  its  developing  self-consciousness,  is  becoming  in 
creasingly  sure  of  the  necessity  before  it  of  working  out  its  own 
destiny,  of  settling  its  own  problems.  The  majority  of  colored 
people  do  not,  I  believe,  hate  the  whites,  but  they  are  expecting 
less  and  less  from  them.  And  irrespective  of  divisions,  of  con 
flicting  beliefs  and  plans  for  development  here  in  America,  or  race 
integrity  in  Africa,  the  Negroes  are  standing  together  in  a  stead 
fast  belief  in  their  own  destiny  to  be  worked  out  within  and  by 
themselves. 


NEGRO  IN  LITERATURE  AND  ART  * 

The  Negro  is  primarily  an  artist.  The  usual  way  of  putting 
this  is  to  speak  disdainfully  of  his  sensuous  nature.  This  means 
that  the  only  race  which  has  held  at  bay  the  life  destroying  forces 
of  the  tropics,  has  gained  therefrom  in  some  slight  compensation 
a  sense  of  beauty,  particularly  for  sound  and  color,  which  charac 
terizes  the  race.  The  Negro  blood  which  flowed  in  the  veins  of 
many  of  the  mightiest  of  the  Pharaohs  accounts  for  much  of 
Egyptian  art,  and  indeed,  Egyptian  civilization  owes  much  in  its 
origins  to  the  development  of  the  large  strain  of  Negro  blood 
which  manifested  itself  in  every  grade  of  Egyptian  society. 

1By  W.  E.  Burghardt  DuBois,  Ph.D.  Editor,  The  Crisis.  Annals 
of  the  American  Academy.  49:233-7.  September,  1913. 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  49 

Semitic  civilization  also  had  its  Negroid  influences,  and  these 
continually  turn  toward  art  as  in  the  case  of  Nosseyeb,  one  of 
the  five  great  poets  of  Damascus  under  the  Ommiades.  It  was 
therefore  not  to  be  wondered  at  that  in  modern  days  one  of  the 
greatest  of  modern  literatures,  the  Russian,  should  have  been 
founded  by  Pushkin,  the  grandson  of  a  full  blooded  Negro,  and 
that  among  the  painters  of  Spain  was  the  Mulatto  slave,  Gomez. 
Back  of  all  this  development  by  way  of  contact,  comes  the  artistic 
sense  of  the  indigeneous  Negro  as  shown  in  the  stone  figures  of 
Sherbro,  the  bronzes  of  Benin,  the  marvelous  handwork  in  iron 
and  other  metals  which  has  characterized  the  Negro  race  so  long 
that  archaeologists  today,  with  less  and  less  hesitation,  are  ascrib 
ing  the  discovery  of  the  welding  of  iron  to  the  Negro  race. 

To  America,  the  Negro  could  bring  only  his  music,  but  that 
was  quite  enough.  The  only  real  American  music  is  that  of  the 
Negro  American,  except  the  meagre  contribution  of  the  Indian. 
Negro  music  divides  itself  into  many  parts:  the  older  African 
wails  and  chants,  the  distinctively  Afro-American  folk  song  set 
to  religious  words  and  Calvinistic  symbolism,  and  the  newer  mu 
sic  which  the  slaves  adapted  from  surrounding  themes.  To  this 
may  be  added  the  American  music  built  on  Negro  themes  such 
as  "Swanee  River,"  "John  Brown's  Body,"  "Old  Black  Joe,"  etc. 
In  our  day  Negro  artists  like  Johnson  and  Will  Marian  Cook 
have  taken  up  this  music  and  begun  a  newer  and  most  important 
development,  using  the  syncopated  measure  popularly  known  as 
"rag  time,"  but  destined  in  the  minds  of  musical  students  to  a 
great  career  in  the  future. 

The  expression  in  words  of  the  tragic  experiences  of  the 
Negro  race  is  to  be  found  in  various  places.  First,  of  course, 
there  are  those,  like  Harriet  Beecher  Stowe,  who  wrote  from 
without  the  race.  Then  there  are  black  men  like  Es-Sadi  who 
wrote  the  Epic  of  the  Sudan,  in  Arabic,  that  great  history  of  the 
fall  of  the  greatest  of  Negro  empires,  the  Songhay.  In  Amer 
ica  the  literary  expression  of  Negroes  has  had  a  regular  develop 
ment.  As  early  as  the  eighteenth  century,  and  even  before  the 
Revolutionary  War  the  first  voices  of  Negro  authors  were  heard 
in  the  United  States. 

Phyllis  Wheatley,  the  black  poetess,  was  easily  the  pioneer, 
her  first  poems  appearing  in  1773,  and  other  editions  in  1774  and 
1793.  Her  earliest  poem  was  in  memory  of  George  Whitefield. 
She  was  followed  by  the  Negro,  Olaudah  Equiano— known  by 


50  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

his  English  name  of  Gustavus  Vassa — whose  autobiography  of 
350  pages,  published  in  1787,  was  the  beginning  of  that  long  series 
of  personal  appeals  of  which  Booker  T.  Washington's  Up  From 
Slavery  is  the  latest.  Benjamin  Banneker's  almanacs  represented 
the  first  scientific  work  of  American  Negroes,  and  began  to  be 
issued  in  1792. 

Coming  now  to  the  first  decades  of  the  nineteenth  century  we 
find  some  essays  on  freedom  by  the  African  Society  of  Boston, 
and  an  apology  for  the  new  Negro  church  formed  in  Philadel 
phia.  Paul  Cuffe,  disgusted  with  America,  wrote  an  early  ac 
count  of  Sierra  Leone,  while  the  celebrated  Lemuel  Haynes,  ig 
noring  the  race  question,  dipped  deeply  into  the  New  England 
theological  controversy  about  1815.  In  1829  came  the  first  full- 
voiced,  almost  hysterical,  protest  against  slavery  and  the  color 
line  in  David  Walker's  Appeal  which  aroused  Southern  legisla 
ture  to  action.  This  was  followed  by  the  earliest  Negro  conven 
tions  which  issued  interesting  minutes,  and  a  strong  appeal 
against  disfranchisment  in  Pennsylvania. 

In  1840  some  strong  writers  began  to  appear.  Henry  High 
land  Garnet  and  J.  W.  C.  Pennington  preached  powerful  sermons 
and  gave  some  attention  to  Negro  history  in  their  pamphlets; 
R.  B.  Lewis  made  a  more  elaborate  attempt  at  Negro  history. 
Whitefield's  poems  appeared  in  1846,  and  William  Wells  Brown 
began  a  career  of  writing  which  lasted  from  1847  until  after  the 
war.  In  1845  Douglass'  autobiography  made  its  first  appearance, 
destined  to  run  through  endless  editions  up  until  the  last  in  1893. 
Moreover  it  was  in  1841  that  the  first  Negro  magazine  appeared 
in  America,  edited  by  George  Hogarth  and  published  by  the 
A.  M.  E.  Church. 

In  the  fifties  William  Wells  Brown  published  his  Three  Years 
in  Europe ;  James  Whitefield  published  further  poems,  and  a  new 
poet  arose  in  the  person  of  Frances  E.  W.  Harper,  a  woman  of 
no  little  ability  who  died  lately;  Martin  R.  Delaney  and  William 
Nell  wrote  further  of  Negro  history,  Nell  especially  making 
valuable  contributions  to  the  history  of  the  Negro  soldiers. 
Three  interesting  biographies  were  added  in  this  decade  to  the 
growing  number :  Josiah  Henson,  Samuel  G.  Ward  and  Samuel 
Northrop;  while  Catto,  leaving  general  history,  came  down  to 
the  better  known  history  of  the  Negro  church. 

In  the  sixties  slave  narrative  multiplied  like  that  of  Linda 
Brent,  while  two  studies  of  Africa  based  on  actual  visits  were 


THE   NEGRO   PROBLEM  51 

made  by  Robert  Campbell  and  Dr.  Alexander  Crummell;  Wil 
liam  Douglass  and  Bishop  Daniel  Payne  continued  the  history  of 
the  Negro  church,  while  William  Wells  Brown  carried  forward 
his  work  in  general  Negro  history.  In  this  decade,  too,  Bishop 
Tanner  began  his  work  in  Negro  theology. 

Most  of  the  Negro  talent  in  the  seventies  was  taken  up  in  pol 
itics;  the  older  men  like  Bishop  Wayman  wrote  of  their  experi 
ences;  William  Wells  Brown  wrote  the  Rising  Sun,  and  So- 
journer  Truth  added  her  story  to  the  slave  narratives.  A  new 
poet  arose  in  the  person  of  A.  A.  Whitman,  while  James  M.  Trot 
ter  was  the  first  to  take  literary  note  of  the  musical  ability  of  his 
race.  Indeed  this  section  might  have  been  begun  by  some  refer 
ence  to  the  music  and  folklore  of  the  Negro  race ;  the  music  con 
tained  much  primitive  poetry  and  the  folklore  was  one  of  the 
great  contributions  to  American  civilization. 

In  the  eighties  there  were  signs  of  unrest  and  different  con 
flicting  streams  of  thought.  On  the  one  hand  the  rapid  growth 
of  the  Negro  church  was  shown  by  the  writers  on  the  church  sub 
jects  like  Moore  and  Wayman.  The  historical  spirit  was  espe 
cially  strong.  Still  wrote  of  the  Underground  Railroad ;  Simmons 
issued  his  interesting  biographical  dictionary,  and  the  greatest 
historian  of  the  race  appeared  when  George  W.  Williams  issued 
his  two-volume  history  of  the  Negro  Race  in  America.  The  Po 
litical  turmoil  was  reflected  in  Langston's  Freedom  and  Citizen 
ship,  Fortune's  Black  and  White,  and  Straker's  New  South,  and 
found  its  bitterest  arraignment  in  Turner's  pamphlets;  but  with 
all  this  went  other  new  thought ;  a  black  man  published  his  First 
Greek  Lessons,  Bishop  Payne  issued  his  Treatise  on  Domestic 
Education,  and  Stewart  studied  Liberia. 

In  the  nineties  came  histories,  essays,  novels  and  poems,  to 
gether  with  biographies  and  social  studies.  The  history  was 
represented  by  Payne's  History  of  the  A.  M.  E.  Church,  Hood's 
History  of  the  A.  M.  E.  Zion  Church,  Anderson's  sketch  of 
Negro  Presbyterianism  and  Hagood's  Colored  Man  in  the  M.  E. 
Church ;  general  history  of  the  older  type  by  R.  L.  Perry's  Cush- 
ite  and  the  newer  type  in  Johnson's  history,  while  one  of  the 
secret  societies  found  their  historian  in  Brooks ;  Crogman's  essays 
appeared  and  Archibald  Grimke's  biographies.  The  race  ques 
tion  discussed  in  Frank  Grimke's  published  sermons,  while  social 
studies  were  made  by  Penn,  Wright,  Mossell,  Crummell,  Majors 
and  others.  Most  notable,  however,  was  the  rise  of  the  Negro 


52  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

novelist  and  poet  with  national  recognition ;  Frances  Harper  was 
still  writing  and  Griggs  began  his  racial  novels,  but  both  of  these 
spoke  primarily  to  the  Negro  race ;  on  the  other  hand,  Chestnut's 
six  novels  and  Dunbar's  inimitable  works  spoke  to  the  whole 
nation. 

Since  1900  the  stream  of  Negro  writing  has  continued.  Dun- 
bar  has  found  a  worthy  successor  in  the  less-known  but  more 
carefully  cultured  Braithwaite;  Booker  T.  Washington  has  given 
us  his  biography  and  Story  of  the  Negro;  Kelly  Miller's  trench 
ant  essays  have  appeared  in  book  form ;  Sinclair's  Aftermath  of 
Slavery  has  attracted  attention,  as  have  the  studies  made  by  At 
lanta  University.  The  forward  movement  in  Negro  music  is 
represented  by  J.  W.  and  F.  J.  Work  in  one  direction  and  Rosa 
mond  Johnson,  Harry  Burleigh  and  Will  Marian  Cook  in 
another. 

On  the  whole,  the  literary  output  of  the  American  Negro  has 
been  both  large  and  creditable,  although,  of  course,  comparatively 
little  known;  few  great  names  have  appeared  and  only  here  and 
there  work  that  could  be  called  first  class,  but  this  is  not  a 
peculiarity  of  Negro  literature. 

The  time  has  not  yet  come  for  the  great  development  of 
American  Negro  literature.  The  economic  stress  is  too  great  and 
the  racial  persecution  too  bitter  to  allow  the  leisure  and  the 
poise  for  which  literature  calls.  On  the  other  hand  never  in  the 
world  has  a  richer  mass  of  material  been  accumulated  by  a  people 
than  that  which  the  Negroes  possess  today  and  are  becoming 
conscious  of.  Slowly  but  surely  they  are  developing  artists  of 
technic  who  will  be  able  to  use  this  material.  The  nation  does 
not  notice  this  for  everything  touching  the  Negro  is  banned 
by  magazines  and  publishers  unless  it  takes  the  form  of  caricature 
or  bitter  attack,  or  is  so  thoroughly  innocuous  as  to  have  no 
literary  flavor. 

Outside  of  literature  the  American  Negro  has  distinguished 
himself  in  other  lines  of  art.  One  need  only  mention  Henry 
O.  Tanner  whose  pictures  hang  in  the  great  galleries  of  the 
world,  including  the  Luxembourg.  There  are  a  score  of  other 
less  known  colored  painters  of  ability  including  Bannister, 
Harper,  Scott  and  Brown.  To  these  may  be  added  the  actors 
headed  by  Ira  Aldridge,  who  played  in  Covent  Garden,  was 
decorated  by  the  King  of  Prussia  and  the  Emperor  of  Russia, 
and  made  a  member  of  learned  societies. 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  53 

There  have  been  many  colored  composers  of  music.  Popular 
songs  like  Grandfather's  Clock,  Listen  to  the  Mocking  Bird,  Carry 
Me  Back  to  Old  Virginia,  etc.,  were  composed  by  colored  men. 
There  were  a  half  dozen  composers  of  ability  among  New 
Orleans'  freedmen  and  Harry  Burleigh,  Cook  and  Johnson  are 
well  known  today.  There  have  been  sculptors  like  Edmonia 
Lewis,  and  singers  like  Flora  Batson,  whose  color  alone  kept 
her  from  the  grand  opera  stage. 

To  appraise  rightly  this  body  of  art  one  must  remember  that 
it  represents  the  work  of  those  artists  only  whom  accident  set 
free;  if  the  artist  had  a  white  face  his  Negro  blood  did  not 
militate  against  him  in  the  fight  for  recognition;  if  his  Negro 
blood  was  visible  white  relatives  may  have  helped  him ;  in  a 
few  cases  ability  was  united  to  indomitable  will.  But  the 
shrinking,  modest,  black  artist  without  special  encouragement 
had  little  or  no  chance  in  a  world  determined  to  make  him  a 
menial.  So  this  sum  of  accomplishment  is  but  an  imperfect 
indication  of  what  the  Negro  race  is  capable  of  in  America 
and  in  the  World. 


RURAL  NEGRO  AND  THE  SOUTH1 

Of  the  nine  million  Negroes,  or  nearly  that  number,  in  the 
South,  about  seven  million  are  in  the  rural  districts.  They  are 
on  the  farms,  the  plantation,  and  in  the  small  town.  It  is  worth 
while  to  consider  these  numbers.  Here  is  a  population  that  is 
three  times  as  large  as  that  of  Denmark.  It  includes  eighty 
per  cent  of  the  whole  Negro  population  in  the  South,  the 
great  bulk  of  the  Negro  population  in  America,  in  fact.  Of  this 
seven  million  it  is  safe  to  say  that  2,200,000  persons  are  actually 
working,  either  as  hired  hands,  tenant  farmers,  croppers,  or 
renters  and  independent  owners,  upon  the  land.  This  number 
includes  women  and  children,  for,  on  the  farm  and  the  plantation, 
the  unit  of  labor  is  not  the  individual  but  the  family,  and  in 
the  South  today  Negro  women  still  do  a  large  part  of  the  work 
in  the  fields. 

Now,  despite  all  that  has  been  said  about  the  efficiency  or 
inefficiency  of  Negro  farm  labor,  and  putting  aside  all  theories 

1  By  Dr.  Booker  T.  Washington,  National  Conference  of  Charities  and 
Correction.  1914:121-7. 


54  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

and  all  purely  academic  notions  about  the  matter,  people  who 
live  in  the  cotton  growing  states  know  that  a  very  large  part  of 
the  business  of  those  states  is  based  on  the  Negro  and  the  mule. 
In  some  other  parts  of  the  world  where  land  is  scarce  and  labor 
is  plenty,  business  in  the  agricultural  districts  is  based  on  land ; 
but  in  the  South,  where,  when  the  planter  wants  to  borrow 
money,  he  finds  his  credit  at  the  bank  is  usually  determined  by 
the  number  of  reliable  Negro  tenants  he  can  control,  business 
is  based  on  labor.  In  other  words,  the  value  of  the  land  and 
of  all  that  goes  with  it  and  depends  upon  it,  is  determined  very 
largely,  more  largely,  perhaps,  than  is  true  of  any  other  part  of 
the  country,  by  the  character  and  quantity  of  the  labor  supply. 

This,  then,  defines  the  problem  of  the  rural  Negro  in  his 
relation  to  the  South.  The  two  million  and  more  Negroes  who 
are  employed  in  agriculture  in  the  southern  states  have  in  their 
hands,  either  as  renters  or  as  owners,  40  per  cent  of  the 
tillable  land.  Something  like  100,000,000  of  the  150,000,000  acres 
of  improved  land  is  cultivated  by  Negro  labor,  and  of  every 
eleven  bales  of  cotton  produced  in  the  South,  seven  are  raised 
\  by  Negroes. 

The  Negro  is  here  and  he  is  likely  to  remain.  First,  because 
after  something  like  three  hundred  years  he  has  adapted  himself 
to  the  country  and  the  people;  because  experience  has  taught 
him,  that,  on  the  whole,  the  vast  majority  of  the  Negroes  are 
more  at  home  and  better  off  in  the  agricultural  regions  of  the 
South  than  they  are  likely  to  be  in  any  other  part  of  the  world ; 
and  finally  because  the  southern  white  man  does  not  want  him 
to  go  away.  You  may  say  what  you  please  about  segregation 
of  the  races,  but  when  there  is  work  to  be  done  about  the 
plantation,  when  it  comes  time  to  plant  and  pick  the  cotton  the 
white  man  does  not  want  the  Negro  so  far  away  that  he  cannot 
reach  him  by  the  sound  of  his  voice. 

These  seven  million  black  people  occupying  this  vast  territory 
representing  so  large  a  part  of  the  working  force,  and  having  so 
large  a  share  of  the  one  great  primary  industry  in  their  hands, 
constitute  a  very  interesting  and  very  serious  problem,  and  one 
which  deserves  the  thoughtful  consideration  and  study,  not  only 
of  the  South,  but  of  the  whole  country.  The  southern  people, 
in  particular,  are  bound  to  be  concerned  in  the  fortunes  and 
progress  of  a  people  with  whom  their  own  progress  and  prosperity 
are  so  intimately  bound. 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  55 

At  the  present  time  Negroes  in  the  rural  districts  represent, 
in  some  respects,  the  best  portion  of  the  Negro  race.  They 
are  for  the  most  part  a  vigorous,  wholesome,  simple-minded 
people.  They  are,  as  yet,  almost  untouched  by  the  vices  of  city 
life,  and  still  maintain  on  the  whole,  their  confidence  in  the  good 
will  of  the  white  people  by  whom  they  are  surrounded. 

These  seven  million  people  represent,  therefore,  tremendous 
possibilities  for  good  and  for  evil,  to  themselves  and  the  com 
munity  in  which  they  live.  From  an  economic  view  alone,  this 
large  actual  and  potential  labor  force  represents  a  vast  store 
of  undeveloped  wealth.  A  gold  mine  of  productive  energy,  in 
fact.  Imported  to  this  country  at  an  enormous  cost  in  suffering 
and  in  money;  trained  and  disciplined  during  two  hundred 
fifty  years  of  slavery,  and  now  waiting  to  be  developed,  under 
the  influences  of  free  institutions,  the  Negro  is  one  of  the 
great  natural  resources  of  this  southern  community.  This  being 
so,  the  prosperity  of  the  South  is  very  largely  bound  up  with 
the  latent  possibilities  of  the  Negro.  Just  in  proportion  as  he 
becomes  an  efficient  farmer  and  a  dependable  laborer,  just  to 
that  extent  will  the  whole  country  move  forward  and  prosperity 
be  multiplied. 

How  is  it  possible  to  make  the  Negro  farmer  more  efficient 
and  the  Negro  laborer  more  dependable?  I  can  perhaps  best 
tell  how  to  succeed  with  Negro  labor  by  using  some  illustrations 
that  have  come  under  my  observation  which  show  how  not  to 
succeed. 

Some  years  ago,  when  I  was  in  Mississippi,  a  planter  asked 
me  to  visit  his  plantation.  I  found  he  had  a  large  number  of 
colored  tenants,  but  I  was  surprised  at  the  small  acreage  assigned 
to  each  family.  In  one  case  I  remember  there  was  one  family 
that  numbered  three  or  four  strong,  sturdy  hands,  which  was 
allowed  to  rent  only  about  ten  acres  of  land.  When  I  asked  the 
owner  of  the  plantation  why  he  did  not  let  this  family  have 
more  land  he  replied  that  the  soil  was  so  productive  that,  if  he 
allowed  them  to  rent  more,  they  would  soon  be  making  such  a 
profit  that  they  would  be  able  to  buy  land  of  their  own  and  he 
would  lose  them  as  renters.  This  is  one  way  to  make  the  Negro 
inefficient  as  a  laborer. 

If  Negro  labor  is  to  become  more  efficient,  every  effort  should 
be  made  to  encourage  rather  than  to  discourage  the  Negro  in  his 
ambition  to  go  forward,  to  buy  land  and  plant  himself  perma- 


56  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

nently  on  the  soil.  In  the  long  run  the  planter  will  not  suffer 
from  the  existence  in  his  neighborhood  of  Negro  farmers  who 
offer  an  example  of  thrift  and  industry  to  their  neighbors.  For 
example,  Macon  County,  in  which  I  live,  was  the  only  one  of  the 
Black  Belt  counties  of  Alabama  which  showed  an  increase  of 
Negro  population  in  the  decade  from  1900  to  1910.  '  The  reason 
was  that  a  special  effort  had  been  made  in  that  county  to  improve 
the  public  schools  and  this  brought  into  the  county  a  large  num 
ber  of  progressive  farmers  who  were  anxious  to  own  homes  in 
the  neighborhood  of  a  good  school.  It  not  only  did  that,  but  it 
greatly  increased  the  demand  for  tenant  farms  and  so  brought 
to  the  land  what  it  needed,  namely  labor,  efficient  and  dependable 
labor. 

From  direct  investigation  I  find  that  many  valuable  colored 
laborers  leave  the  farm  for  the  reason  that  they  seldom  see  or 
handle  cash.  The  Negro  laborer  likes  to  put  his  hands  on  real 
money  as  often  as  possible.  In  the  city,  while  he  is  not  so  well 
off  in  the  long  run,  as  I  have  said,  he  is  usually  paid  off  in  cash 
every  Saturday  night.  In  the  country  he  seldom  gets  cash  oftener 
than  once  a  month,  or  once  a  year.  Not  a  few  of  the  best  colored 
laborers  leave  the  farms  because  of  the  poor  houses  furnished  by 
the  owners.  The  condition  of  some  of  the  one  room  cabins  is 
miserable  almost  beyond  description.  In  the  towns  and  cities, 
while  he  may  have  a  harder  time  in  other  respects,  the  colored 
man  can  usually  find  a  reasonably  comfortable  house  with  two 
or  three  rooms. 

No  matter  how  ignorant  a  colored  man  may  be  himself,  he 
almost  always  wants  his  children  to  have  education.  A  very  large 
number  of  colored  laborers  leave  the  farm  because  they  cannot 
get  an  education  for  their  children.  In  a  large  section  of  the 
farming  district  of  the  South,  Negro  schools  run  only  from  two 
to  five  months  in  the  year.  In  many  cases  children  have  to  walk 
miles  to  reach  these  schools.  The  school  houses  are,  in  most 
cases,  wretched  little  hovels  with  no  light  or  warmth  or  comfort 
of  any  kind.  The  teacher  receives  perhaps  not  more  than  $18  or 
$25  a  month  and  as  every  school  superintendent  knows,  poor  pay 
means  a  poor  teacher. 

In  saying  this,  I  do  not  overlook  the  fact  that  conditions  are 
changing  for  the  better  in  all  parts  of  the  South.  White  people 
are  manifesting  more  interest  each  year  in  the  training  of 
colored  people,  and  what  is  equally  important,  colored  people 


THE   NEGRO   PROBLEM  57 

are  beginning  to  learn  to  use  their  education  in  sensible  ways ; 
they  are  learning  that  it  is  no  disgrace  for  an  educated  person  to 
work  on  the  farm.  They  are  learning  that  education  which  does 
not  somehow  touch  life  is  not  education  at  all.  More  and  more 
we  are  all  learning  that  the  school  is  not  simply  a  place  where 
boys  and  girls  learn  to  read  and  cipher;  but  a  place  where  they 
learn  to  live.  We  are  all  learning  that  education  which  does  not 
somehow  or  other  improve  the  farm  and  the  home,  which  does 
not  make  a  return  to  the  community  in  some  form  or  other,  has 
no  justification  for  its  existence. 

That  is  why  the  movement  for  the  improvement  of  rural  life 
which  has  taken  such  hold  upon  the  South  in  recent  years  has 
gone  hand  in  hand  with  the  movement  for  better  schools.  More 
and  more  we  are  beginning  to  learn  that  progress  in  agriculture 
is  dependent  in  the  last  analysis  on  the  progress  of  the  man  be 
hind  the  plow.  The  rural  Negro  is  just  now  beginning  to  share 
in  this  improvement;  he  is  just  now  beginning  to  feel  the  influ 
ence  of  the  upward  impulse  in  the  life  of  the  rural  South. 

Denmark,  to  which  I  referred  at  the  beginning  of  my  address, 
has  become,  within  a  period  of  fifty  years,  the  most  prosperous 
agricultural  country  in  the  world.  In  no  country  in  the  world  is 
agriculture  so  thoroughly  organized  and  so  efficiently  carried  on 
as  there.  Denmark  has  brought  this  result  about  because,  sixty 
or  seventy  years  ago,  a  movement  was  started  in  that  country 
to  educate  the  common  people,  to  educate  especially  the  people 
who  worked  on  the  soil. 

I  believe  with  education  of  the  right  kind  we  can  do  as  well 
in  the  South.  The  possibilities  of  the  Negro  farmer  are  indi 
cated  by  the  progress  that  he  has  made  in  fifty  years.  In  1863 
there  were  in  all  the  United  States  only  a  few  farms  owned  by 
Negroes.  They  now  operate  in  the  South  890,140  farms  which 
are  217,800  more  than  there  were  in  this  section  in  1863.  Negro 
farm  laborers  and  Negro  farmers  in  the  South  now  cultivate  ap 
proximately  100,000,000  acres  of  land,  of  which  42,500,000  acres 
are  under  the  control  of  Negro  farmers.  The  increase  of  Negro 
farm  owners  in  the  past  fifty  years  compares  favorably  with  the 
increase  of  white  farm  owners.  The  Negroes  of  this  country 
now  own  20,000,000  acres  or  31,000  square  miles  of  land.  If  all 
the  land  they  own  was  placed  in  one  body,  its  area  would  be 
greater  than  that  of  the  State  of  South  Carolina. 

The  Negro  has  made  his  greatest  progress  in  agriculture  dur- 


58  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

ing  the  past  ten  years.  In  that  time  the  value  of  the  domestic 
animals  which  they  owned  increased  from  $85,216,337  to 
$177,273,000,  or  107  per  cent;  poultry  from  $3,788,792  to  $5,113,756 
or  35  per  cent;  land  and  buildings  from  $69,636,420  to 
$273,501,665  or  293  per  cent.  From  1900  to  1910  the  total  value 
of  farm  property  owned  by  the  colored  farmers  of  the  South  in 
creased  from  $177,404,688  to  $492,898,218,  or  177  per  cent. 

In  view  of  all  this  it  seems  to  me  that  it  is  part  of  wisdom  to 
take  hold  of  this  problem  in  a  broad,  statesmanlike  way.  Instead 
of  striving  to  keep  the  Negro  down,  we  should  devote  the  time 
and  money  and  effort  that  is  now  used  for  the  purpose  of  punish 
ing  the  Negro  for  crimes — committed  in  many  instances  because 
he  has  been  neglected  and  allowed  to  grow  up  in  ignorance,  with 
out  ambition  and  without  hope — and  use  it  for  the  purpose  of 
making  the  Negro  a  better  and  more  useful  citizen. 

The  Negro  is  not  only  capable  of  improvement  but  he  is  worth 
the  effort.  I  have  traveled  in  many  parts  of  the  old  world  and 
I  have  studied  the  condition  and  the  prosperity  of  the  working 
classes  there.  I  am  frank  to  say  that  I  have  never  seen  any  part 
of  the  world  where  it  seemed  to  me  the  masses  of  the  Negro 
people  would  be  better  off  than  right  here  in  these  southern 
states.  On  the  other  hand,  knowing  the  South  as  I  do,  I  do  not 
believe  the  Southern  people  will  ever  find  a  people  who  are  able 
and  willing  to  adapt  themselves  to  the  habits,  traditions  and  the 
ambition  of  the  southern  people  as  the  Negro  has  done. 

The  two  races  in  the  South  have  grown  up  here  together. 
There  exists  between  them  an  understanding  that  the  world  out 
side  can  not  know.  Our  situation  is  in  many  respects  unique. 
But  with  mutual  good  will  and  the  cooperation  of  the  best  ele 
ments  in  both  races  I  believe  we  shall  be  able  to  solve  all  our 
problems  and  at  the  same  time  to  give  to  the  world  an  illustra 
tion  of  how  two  races,  different  in  origin  and  color,  can  live  to 
gether  in  peace  and  prosper. 


PROBLEM 

A  NEGRO  TO  AMERICA ' 

How  would  you  like  to  have  us,  as  we  are? 

Or  sinking  'neath  the  load  we  bear? 
Our  eyes  fixed  forward  on  a  star 

Or  gazing  empty  in  despair? 

Rising  or  falling?     Men  or  things? 

With  dragging  pace  or  footsteps  fleet? 
Strong,  willing  sinews  in  your  wings? 

Or  tightening  chains  about  your  feet? 


FUSE,  FIGHT  OR  FAIL 2 

"Their  angels  do  always  behold  the  face  of  the  Father." 

Angel  of  the  Negro  race  speaks : 

"They  say— do  the  Aryan  followers  of  Jesus,  the  Semite— 
that  the  Negro  peoples  are  the  child-race  of  the  world.  If  their 
word  be  aught  more  than  sound,  let  mine  be  listened  to,  for 
children  grow  up  in  the  fulness  of  time,  and  I  am  the  voice 
of  the  Negro  race  speaking  Caucasian  language,  the  language 
of  the  adult  races.  Listen,  then,  O  strong  men  of  the  earth, 
to  the  sacred  voice  of  the  Child! 

"I  have  no  history.  I  have  no  country.  I  use  borrowed 
flags  and  borrowed  languages  and  borrowed  religions.  My  own 
languages  and  religious  are  the  wails  of  infants  crying  in  the 
night.  Do  I  wish  to  make  my  needs  articulately  known,  I  must 
essay  to  use  adult  words  of  the  great  powers.  Forgive  me  if 
my  language  seem  only  childish  prattle. 

"Some  speak  contemptuously  and  others  pessimistically 
about  my  hope  of  growing  up,  because  during  the  long  ages  of 

'Survey.   39:709.     March   30,    1918. 

2  From  Race  Orthodoxy  in  the  South  by  Thomas  Pearce  Bailey,  Ph.D. 
Formerly  Associate  Professor  of  Education  in  the  University  of  Cali 
fornia.  Chap.  vii.  Copyright  by  Neale  Publishing  Co.,  New  York.  1914- 


60  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

my  existence  I  have  not  reached  man's  stature.  Others  believe 
that  my  blood  enters  somewhat  into  the  make-up  of  that  great 
Mediterranean  race  which  conquered  the  world  through  culture 
and  law  and  arms,  and  established  western  civilization.  But  I 
am  making  no  speculative  claims :  howbeit  I  might  be  permitted 
to  develop  for  a  few  centuries  under  favorable  circumstances 
before  final  judgment  is  passed  on  my  possibilities  of  adultship. 
The  Teutons  were  quite  childish  two  thousand  years  ago,  and 
had  to  borrow  religion,  arts  and  almost  everything  else  of 
cultural  value  from  the  Mediterranean  peoples. 

"This  is  an  age  when  men  talk  greatly  of  evolution,  of 
natural  and  artificial  selection,  of  the  imperceptibly  slow  processes 
of  nature,  of  use  and  disuse  of  the  brain,  of  the  effects  of 
environment  on  the  speed  of  change,  of  the  apparent  arbitrariness 
of  spontaneous  variations.  Give  me  time,  without  coddling  and 
without  intimidation.  Then,  if  I  fail  to  grow  to  man's  estate, 
let  me  die  the  death  of  a  child  whose  guardians  have  done  the 
best  they  could  for  him.  It  may  be  that  Nature  has  cruelly 
caused  premature  closing  of  my  skull  sutures,  and  that  such  a 
condition  will  always  obtain.  But  men  of  science  have  not  yet 
killed  my  hopes  by  fastening  this  accusation  on  Nature.  It  may 
be  that  what  has  not  yet  been  done  can  never  be  done,  and  that 
my  development  is  doomed  to  arrest  because  I  have  thus  far 
failed  to  grow  as  fast  as  some  other  races.  But  philosophy  has 
not  yet  declared  that  what  has  not  yet  been  can  never  be.  Nor 
have  European  Teutons  undergone  their  comparatively  late 
development  in  the  jungles  of  torrid  Africa  as  my  people  have. 
Even  my  deficient  brain  weight  does  not  unduly  distress  me 
when  I  realize  that  my  brain  is  that  of  a  man,  not  that  of  an 
ape,  and  that  my  association  centers  have  hardly  had  sufficient 
opportunity  for  growth.  Men  of  science  tell  me,  indeed,  that 
the  brain  may  yet  prove  itself  to  be  the  most  plastic  organ  in 
the  body,  as  it  is  undoubtedly  the  educable  organ. 

"Remember,  too,  O  Caucasian,  that  there  is  an  education  in 
social  and  political  life ;  that  there  is  education  in  racial  self- 
respect,  in  hope,  in  the  encouragement  of  one's  fellowman. 
Shall  we  not  have  such  education  somehow,  somewhere?  Do 
not  quench  the  smoking  flax,  most  Christian  Caucasians.  I  have 
looked  the  white  man  in  the  face  and  lived.  Give  me  credit 
for  ability  to  survive,  and  help  me  rather  than  discourage  me. 
You  are  not  afraid  of  my  competition  and  you  can  take  no 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  61 

pleasure  in  depriving  me  of  hope;  therefore  give  me  a  chance, 
give  me  a  trial,  give  me  time  and  space,  faith  and  hope,  as 
my  allies. 

"My  achievements  under  tutelage  during  slavery  and  freedom 
have  been  exaggerated  by  some  and  underrated  by  others.  So 
it  is  always  with  children's  performances.  I  am,  however, 
hopeful,  for  my  Heavenly  Father's  face  is  still  lovely  to  look 
upon. 

"America,  you  have  partially  adopted  an  orphan  child.  Will 
you  educate  it?  Will  you  give  it  a  start  in  life,  or  will  you 
use  it  only  as  a  drudge  in  your  service?  Will  you  equip  it 
well  and  send  it  to  seek  its  fortunes,  or  will  you  adopt  it  fully 
into  your  family?  Will  you  at  least  make  up  your  mind  zvhat 
you  are  going  to  do  with  this  orphan,  which  is  now  old  enough 
to  take  an  active  interest  in  its  own  welfare? 

"Don't  call  me  a  child  and  yet  expect  from  me  the  morality 
and  mentality  of  a  man.  Don't  say  that  I  am  a  problem  because 
I  am  a  man,  and  then  act  as  if  you  destined  me  to  serve  your 
interests  rather  than  my  own.  DorfJ^lameme  for  my  backward 
ness  and  then  begrudge  any  forward  movement  in  my  behalf. 
Don't  leave  me  to  be  the  prey  of  undiscriminating  doctrinaires 
on  the  one  hand  and  of  self-deceiving  exploiters  on  the  other. 

"Am  I  a  human  being?  Then  treat  me  as  such.  Are 
democratic  and  Christian  doctrines  true  for  all  men?  Then 
have  them  apply  to  me.  Ought  every  child  to  be  educated  for 
its  own  sake  and  up  to  the  limit  of  its  powers?  Then  give  me 
such  an  education. 

"I  do  not  ask  that  manhood's  rights  be  given  to  me  while  in 
child's  estate.  But  assure  me,  white  friend,  that  my  manhood 
is  to  be  complete  and  free. 

"You  admit  that  I  am  not  your  property  but  your  charge. 
Then  help  to  free  my  mind  from  ignorance,  my  hand  from 
sloth  and  awkwardness,  my  soul  from  superstition  and  cringing 
acquiescence  in  'my  fate.'  Remember  your  own  childhood. 
Forget  not  your  Declaration  of  Independence.  Be  mindful  of 
your  Christ's  commands.  Those  who  are  meek  and  patient 
enough  to  eat  the  crumbs  that  fall  from  the  master's  table  ought 
some  time,  somehow,  somewhere  gain  a  child's  portion, 
cannot  be  Isaac,  let  me  at  least  be  a  better-cared-for  Ishmael. 
If  you  send  me  away,  let  the  protecting,  self-sacrificing  generosity 
of  a  mother  spirit  go  with  me. 


62  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

"But  why  should  I  go?  True,  I  am  only  a  waif.  But  here 
was  I  born.  This  is  all  the  native  land  that  I  have.  Why  am 
I  an  alien  in  this  land  of  my  birth?  Why  am  I  not  part  of  the 
community?  Why  is  it  that  in  your  heart  of  hearts  you  have 
solemnly  sworn  that  I  shall  not  be  a  complete  citizen?  Why 
do  you  begrudge  me  an  education,  and  are  willing  that  some  of 
your  children  should  remain  uneducated  rather  than  that  I  should 
be  compelled  to  go  to  school? 

"May  I  be  allowed  to  study  the  workings  of  the  white  man's 
mind?  May  I  try  to  understand  why  you  will  not  permit  me  to 
attain  unto  full-orbed  manhood?  Let  me  confess  that  I  desire 
nothing  less  than  complete  personality  and  citizenship.  I  do  not 
seek  'social  equality'  if  by  that  expression  you  mean  social 
mingling  with  the  whites.  I  do  not  ask  to  exercise  all  of  my 
rights  under  the  law  of  the  land  and  the  moral  law,  but  rather 
I  want  the  assurance  that  all  of  manhood's  rights  will  come 
to  me  in  time,  as  I  prove  myself  worthy. 

"To  deny  natural  inequality  would  be  false  and  futile.  But 
should  human  beings  be  treated  as  representatives  of  a  race 
rather  than  as  free,  self-respecting  persons?  And  should  a 
child  race  be  forbidden  to  grow  up  just  because  it  has  had  a 
retarded  development,  or  because  of  the  exigencies  of  the  white 
man's  labor  market?" 


THE   NEGRO   IN   RELATION   TO   OUR   PUBLIC 
AGENCIES  AND  INSTITUTIONS  x 

The  Negro  problem,  public  or  private,  industrial  or  institu 
tional,  is  a  human  problem.  Until  we  face  the  issue  as  human 
in  its  human  relations;  until  we  think  of  all  citizens  as  human 
beings  with  human  rights,  human  interests  and  human  possi 
bilities ;  until  we  insist  upon  equality  of  opportunity,  economic, 
industrial,  educational,  equality  before  the  law,  equal  sanitary 
provision,  equal  protection  of  person  and  property;  until  we 
become  conscious  of  a  common  brotherhood  and  cease  to  exploit 
the  weak  and  to  treat  them  as  chattels  and  property;  until  we 
put  democracy  into  our  own  life  as  we  speed  its  splendid  hope 

i  By  J.  L.  Kesler,  Dean,  Baylor  University,  Waco,  Texas.  American 
City  (City  ed.)  19:151-7.  August,  1918. 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  63 

to  the  world— we  are  not  even  in  sight  of  a  solution,  and  futility 
faces  our  tasks  of  reform. 

It  is  not  simply  a  Negro  problem;  it  is  also  a  Caucasian 
problem.  It  is  not  simply  the  "white  man's  burden";  it  is  also 
the  black  man's  burden.  It  is  a  problem  of  both  races.  Its 
solution  means  mutual  understandings  and  readjustments.  It 
means  mutually  a  more  generous  sympathy  and  respect,  without 
which  there  can  be  no  common  standing  ground.  This  new 
attitude  must  not  only  be  intellectually  allowed  by  the  white 
people;  it  must  be  consciously  felt  and  communicated,  so  that 
a  new  atmosphere  of  dignity  and  freedom  and  possibility  shall 
meet  and  strengthen  the  aspiration  of  the  Negro  race  and 
superinduce  a  conscious  self-respect  and  hope.  By  some  such 
means  alone  may  the  perils  of  two  segregated  races  with  mutual 
interrelations,  living  in  the  same  territory,  be  reduced  to  a 
minimum. 

Of  the  10,000,000  Negroes  in  the  United  States,  about 
9,000,000  live  in  the  South.  They  constitute  about  one-tenth  of 
the  population  of  the  United  States  and  about  one-third  of  the 
population  of  the  South.  There  is  no  hope  for  the  South  if 
one-third  of  its  population  is  to  remain  undeveloped  and 
inefficient.  If  the  submerged  third  is  to  remain  ignorant,  the 
South  will  not  only  fail  of  one-third  of  its  potential,  but  the 
other  two-thirds  will  descend  in  the  scale.  If  unsanitary  condi 
tions  and  disease  are  allowed  to  plague  one-third  of  the  popula 
tion,  and  other  two-thirds  cannot  escape  the  contagion. 

There  are  two  kinds  of  white  people  in  the  South  and  two 
kinds  of  black  people.  The  better  class  of  white  people,  people 
of  culture  and  capacity,  have  generous  sympathies  for  the  black 
people  and  give  them  a  fair  deal.  The  other  class  make  up  the 
mobs,  are  ignorant,  often  vicious,  many  of  them  guilty  of  or 
capable  of  the  crimes  of  the  brutes  they  lynch.  Among  black 
people,  too,  there  are  good  and  bad.  Some  are  criminal^  and 
degenerate,  just  as  some  white  people  are.  Some  are  intelligent 
and  clean  and  moral  and  progressive  and  splendid.  The  criminal 
Negro  is  not  to  be  taken  as  the  representative  of  the  race  any 
more  than  the  criminal  white  man.  Taking  them  all  in  all, 
they  have  made  a  worthy  record  in  this  first  half  century  out 
of  slavery.  They  began  with  90  per  cent  illiteracy  and  have 
reduced  it  to  30  per  cent.  Starting  with  nothing,  they  own 


64  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

20,000,000  acres  of  farm  lands  and  farm  property  worth 
$500,000,000.  They  cultivate  as  farmers  and  tenants  41,000,000 
acres  and  as  laborers  60,000,000  more.  Numerically  one-third  of 
the  population,  they  till  two-thirds  of  the  land  in  the  South. 
Their  total  property  is  valued  at  $700,000,000.  Fifty  thousand 
of  them  are  engaged  in  professional  work  as  lawyers,  dentists, 
physicians,  teachers.  About  25,000  of  them  are  in  government 
positions.  They  print  over  400  newspapers  and  periodicals,  have 
over  loo  insurance  companies,  their  64  banks  do  a  $20,000,000 
business. 

Our  educational  policy  is  fundamental.  We  have  been  accus 
tomed  to  consider  all  moneys  spent  on  Negro  education  as  a 
gift,  and  to  congratulate  ourselves  on  our  generosity,  since  in 
the  last  fifty  years  his  taxes  were  but  a  small  part  of  his 
educational  apportionment.  This  attitude  is  changing.  Education 
is  an  investment  according  to  needs  and  not  according  to  tax 
receipts.  As  a  citizen  the  Negro  deserves  and  necessity  requires 
that  he  should  have  equal  educational  opportunity  with  white 
citizens. 

In  the  last  fifty  years  the  South  has  but  meagerly  provided 
for  any  of  her  schools.  Even  now  the  scholastic  per  capita  of 
California  is  $36.30,  while  that  of  North  Carolina  is  only  $4.16. 
Still  this  does  not  relieve  us  entirely  from  censure  for  the  too 
great  discrimination  between  the  races.  The  average  educational 
per  capita  between  the  ages  of  six  and  fourteen  in  the  South 
for  white  children  is  $10.32,  for  the  black  children  $2.89.  The 
greatest  discrepancy  is  in  Louisiana,  where  it  is  $13.73  for  every 
white  child  and  only  $1.31  for  every  black  child.  Here,  too, 
illiteracy  is  highest  for  both  races,  14.4  per  cent  for  the  white 
and  48.4  per  cent  for  the  black. 

Money  has  been  contributed  generously,  largely  by  men  of 
the  North,  to  private  and  denominational  schools.  These  have 
in  property  and  permanent  funds  over  $28,000,000,  with  an  income 
of  $3,000,000.  But  only  4  per  cent  of  Negro  children  attend 
these  schools  and  only  7  per  cent  of  the  children  who  are  in 
school  attend  schools  thus  provided.  What  does  this  mean?  It 
means  that  if  Negro  children  are  ever  to  be  educated,  they  will 
have  to  be  educated  in  public  schools  provided  by  public  taxes, 
and  made  effective  by  compulsory  attendance.  This  is  the 
heaviest  responsibility  and  obligation  of  the  educational  forces 
of  the  South— providing  adequate  schoolhouses,  equipment, 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  65 

money,  teachers,  and  keeping  the  standards  high,  not  alone  to 
eliminate  illiteracy,  but  to  overcome  ignorance  and  to  provide 
training  for  appreciation,  character,  efficiency;  to  develop  good 
citizenship  in  the  Negro  not  simply  for  safety  and  suppression 
of  crime,  but  for  race  realization  in  sanitary,  moral,  and 
industrial  progress — making  crime  impossible  by  eradicating  or 
leaving  behind  the  criminal  instincts. 

Those  who  want  to  keep  the  Negro  down  need  to  get  up 
themselves.  Those  whose  social  position  is  unquestioned  need 
not  be  concerned  about  "social  equality."  General  social  equality 
is  an  ignis  fatuus.  There  isn't  any  such  thing  anywhere  in  any 
race.  In  all  races  there  are  higher  and  lower,  according  to 
merit,  and  social  intermingling  is  attracted  by  compatability, 
congeniality,  genuine  community  of  interest,  or  it  is  pure  social 
camouflage  and  sham.  In  the  South  neither  the  Negroes  nor 
the  white  people  want  to  intermingle  socially.  Racial  integrity 
and  social  separateness  are  desired  by  both.  To  raise  the  question, 
therefore,  of  racial  equality,  or  social  equality  between  the  races, 
to  say  the  least,  is  an  incongruity  and  an  impertinence. 

What  the  Negro  does  want,  and  what  the  best  white  people 
of  the  South  want  for  him,  is  an  equal  chance  for  personal  and 
social  development,  equal  protection  and  security  under  the  law, 
equal  opportunity,  economic,  industrial,  educational,  equal  con 
veniences  and  comforts  in  street  cars,  railway  coaches,  Pullman 
and  dining  cars.  And  this  he  has  never  had.  When  he  pays  the 
same  fare  he  wants  the  same  service.  He  ought  to  have  it. 
He  likes  a  separate  coach  among  his  own  people,  just  as  we  do, 
but  he  does  not  want  an  inferior  coach.  What  he  loathes  and 
detests  is  the  constant  reminder  that  he  is  inferior,  that  anything 
is  good  enough  for  a  "nigger";  that  sanitation  and  sewerage 
and  police  protection  and  paved  streets  and  parks  are  not 
necessary  for  him;  that  moral  leprosy  and  segregated  vice  may 
preempt  territory  in  his  community  and  be  immune  to  civic 
interest  and  disturbance;  that  he  is  discriminated  against  not 
on  account  of  merit  but  on  account  of  color;  that  his  wife  or 
his  daughter,  if  they  are  beautiful— and  some  of  them  are— are 
not  safe  from  insult  on  account  of  the  lack  of  racial  respect  and 
honor. 

Respect!  Here  is  the  solution— interracial  respect.  For  lack 
of  it  both  races  are  in  peril.  Moral  safety  demands  a  deep  and 
abiding  respect  for  personality  interracial  and  among  all  inter- 


66  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

graded  social  levels,  if  we  are  to  escape  the  moral  backwash 
between  races  and  classes  of  society.  Here  we  need  a  broader 
and  deeper  democracy.  We  may  be  separate  as  races  or  classes, 
but  one  as  human  beings  and  citizens.  This  conscious  democracy 
of  the  rights  of  mankind,  as  human  beings,  is  fundamental  and 
final. 

A  large  number  of  the  Negroes  are  accumulating  property, 
and  living  in  good  homes,  clean,  sanitary,  with  the  comforts 
and  some  of  the  luxuries  of  life.  They  love  music,  they  appreciate 
art,  they  are  educating  their  children,  they  want  a  clean,  moral 
and  wholesome  community  in  which  to  rear  their  children  and 
enjoy  the  safety  and  comforts  of  home  life.  They  expect  this, 
and  as  citizens  they  have  a  right  to  expect  it.  It  is  coming. 
As  they  prove  themselves  capable  of  laying  hold  of  and  improving 
opportunities,  there  is  a  company  of  white  men  and  women,  daily 
growing  larger,  who  are  demanding  these  opportunities  for 
them.  More  than  that,  they  are  helping  them  to  become  capable 
and  to  take  advantage  of  these  opportunities  for  the  benefit  of 
the  whole  community  and  the  whole  nation. 


CHANGED  ATTITUDE  OF  THE  NEGRO  1 

There  is  a  "changed  attitude"  on  the  part  of  the  Negro  toward 
the  question  of  methods  for  advancing  his  social  and  industrial 
interests.  The  Chicago  "Defender,"  which  is  a  Negro  periodical, 
apropos  of  this  says: 

The  younger  generation  of  black  men  are  not  content  to 
move  along  the  lines  of  least  resistance,  as  did  their  sires.  .  . 
We  have  little  sympathy  with  lawlessness,  whether  those  guilty 
of  it  be  black  or  white,  but  it  cannot  be  denied  that  we  have 
much  in  justification  of  our  changed  attitude. 

W.  E.  Burghardt  DuBois,  the  brilliant,  but  bitter,  Negro 
editor  of  "The  Crisis,"  has  been  lately  indulging  in  unrestrained 
counsel  of  "fight"  to  his  constituency.  There  is  clear  evidence 
that  one  wing  of  Negro  leadership  is  inclined  to  counsel  violence 
if  the  aspirations  of  the  race  find  the  road  toward  realization 
blocked.  These  leaders  would  probably  experience  little  difficulty 
in  finding  a  casus  belli  in  the  present  strained  relations.  I  intend 

iFrom  article,  The  Clash  of  Color,  by  Glenn  Frank.  Century.  99:86-98. 
November,  1919. 


THE  NEGRO   PROBLEM  67 

no  wholesale  charge  that  the  Negro  leadership  of  the  country 
has  turned  revolutionary.  That  is  not  true.  But  I  must,  in  the 
interest  of  accuracy,  list  this  germinal  idea  at  work  in  the  Negro 
mind  as  one  of  the  elements  in  our  immediate  race  situation. 
There  is  being  carried  on,  beyond  doubt,  a  propaganda  in  behalf 
of  the  tactics  of  violence.  This  propaganda  is  fostered  not 
only  by  one  type  of  Negro  leader,  but  also  by  those  social 
revolutionaries  who  vulture-like  hover  over  every  field  of  dis 
content.  There  is  undoubtedly  an  attempt  being  made  to  capitalize 
colored  disaffection  in  the  interests  of  the  social  revolution. 

Here,  then,  are  the  more  important  of  the  factors  that  enter 
into  our  post-war  race  problem  in  the  United  States : 

(1)  The  great  influx  of  Southern  Negro  labor  into  Northern 
industrial  centers. 

(2)  Inadequate  housing  facilities  for  the  new  Negro  popu 
lation  in  the  centers  to  which  the  migration  has  led,  with  the 
usual  results  of  congestion  in  the  breeding  of  those  types  and 
qualities  that  readily  yield  to  the  rioting  impulse. 

(3)  The  overflow  of  Negroes  from  crowded  colonies  into 
white  residential  blocks,  with  a  resulting  depreciation  of  property 
values  as  far  as  white  occupancy  is  concerned,  and  the  inevitable 
inter-race  irritation. 

(4)  The  exploitation  of  Negroes  by  real-estate  agents,  both 
black  and  white,  in  the  boosting  of  rentals  and  purchasing  prices. 

(5)  The  impressions  left  upon  the  minds  of  our  returning 
Negro   soldiers  by  the  measure   of   social   equality  which  they 
enjoyed  in  France,  and  the  inevitable  contrast  they  are  drawing 
between    that    attitude    and    the   attitude   they    find    upon    their 
return. 

(6)  An  intensified  race  consciousness  and  race  pride  on  the 
part  of  the  American  Negro  resulting  from  his  having  done  his 
share,  as  soldier  and  civilian,  in  the  war. 

(7)  A  new  sense  of  the  possibility  and  freedom  of  movement 
which    the    Negro    has    acquired    from    having   learned    that    a 
Southern  Negro  apparently  can  stand  the  Northern  climate  and 
make  a  living  in  the  new  surroundings. 

(8)  A    freshened    resentment    on    the    part    of    the  ^  Negro 
against  his  social  and  industrial  limitations  when  he  thinks  of 
them   in   the   light   of   the   ideals    of    freedom,    democracy,    an< 
equality  for  which  he  fought  during  the  war. 

(9)  The  stimulus  to  social-equality  aspirations  growing  c 


68  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

of  the  relations  between  blacks  and  white  prostitutes  who  have 
moved  into  Negro  districts  following  the  breaking  up  of  segre 
gated  vice  districts  in  cities,  as  in  Chicago,  together  with  the 
resentment  aroused  among  near-by  whites. 

(10)  The  irritation  of  many  of  our  returned  soldiers  when 
they  find  their  old  jobs  being  held  by  Negroes,  while  they  are 
having  difficulty  in  getting  back  to  work. 

(u)  A  conflict  of  interests  between  non-union  Negro  labor 
and  organized  white  labor. 

(12)  A  "changed  attitude"  on  the  part  of  the  Negro  that 
nourishes  the  idea  of  revolutionary  methods  for  the  attainment 
of  his  aspirations — an  attitude  fostered  by  one  wing  of  Negro 
leadership,  and  cultivated  by  ultra-radicals  who  dream  of  a 
social  revolution  in  the  United  States. 

Much  will  depend  upon  the  type  of  leadership  the  mass  of 
American  Negroes  choose  to  follow.  Speaking  in  the  broad, 
there  are  three  types  of  Negro  leadership  today  bidding  for 
the  allegiance  of  the  race.  These  are: 

First,  the  ultra-radical  or  revolutionary  type  of  leadership  to 
which  reference  has  already  been  made.  This  type  of  leadership 
is  clearly  described  in  a  recent  issue  of  "Unity,"  a  Chicago 
periodical,  in  a  paragraph  which  reads: 

Long  years  of  oppression  through  disfranchisement,  "Jim  Crow" 
laws,  segregation  policies,  lynching,  economic  discrimination,  and  so  forth, 
coupled  with  the  bitter  experiences  incident  to  the  great  war,  have  raised 
up  a  group  of  young  men  and  women  in  the  negro  ranks  who  are  im 
patient  with  the  old  leaders  of  the  race,  of  both  the  Booker  Washington 
and  DuBois  school,  and  are  clamoring  for  more  aggressive  action  along 
lines  of  uncompromising  social  radicalism.  These  militants  .  .  .  rep 
resent  not  only  extreme  revolt  against  racial  oppression,  but  also  the 
appearance  among  negroes  of  that  same  movement  of  political  and  eco 
nomic  revolution  which  is  now  sweeping  the  world  from  end  to  end. 
It  is  too  early,  as  yet,  to  estimate  the  significance  of  this  sudden 
appearance  among  colored  people  of  this  movement  for  radical  social 
change,  but  that  it  marks  the  entrance  of  the  negro  problem  upon  a 
wholly  new  period  of  development  is  not  altogether  unlikely. 

It  will  be  unfortunate  if  the  American  Negro  to  any  marked 
extent  follows  these  leaders.  It  would  inevitably  bring  down 
upon  the  Negro  the  wrath  of  the  conservative  white  world 
and  make  more  difficult  his  fight  for  even  the  most  elementary 
justice.  And  it  appeals  to  me  as  very  short-sighted  policy  upon 
the  part  of  ultra-radicals  to  attempt  the  winning  of  the  Negro 
to  their  side.  They  will  succeed  only  in  confusing  their  social 
and  economic  issues  with  the  unreasoning  hatreds,  prejudices, 
and  passions  that  cluster  around  the  race  question. 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  69 

Second,  there  is  the  DuBois  school  of  leadership,  which 
urges  the  Negro  to  wage  an  uncompromising  fight  for  the  full 
and  unqualified  rights  of  American  citizenship.  This  school 
would  transplant  in  America  the  European  conception  of  the 
Negro  as  a  white  man  with  an  accidental  blackness  of  skin.  This 
school,  in  the  main,  is  no  more  averse  to  aggressive  methods  than 
the  first  sort  of  leadership  mentioned,  but  is  more  concerned  with 
the  dogma  of  equality  than  with  radical  social  revolution  as  an 
economic  consideration.  DuBois,  in  the  earlier  days  of  his 
public  career  as  scholar  and  writer,  wrote  in  a  style  of  liquid 
beauty  his  protests  against  the  color  line  in  American  life.  His 
writings  were  touched  with  an  appealing  sadness.  The  poet  in 
him  spoke  in  those  days.  But  in  these  later  days  hate  has 
rusted  upon  his  pen.  He  speaks  more  bluntly.  He  snarls  as  a 
wolf  at  bay.  The  poet  has  abdicated  in  favor  of  the  propa 
gandist.  He  tells  the  Negro  soldier  that  he  went  to  Europe  as 
a  fighting  man  and  that  he  must  return  fighting,  fighting,  fighting 
for  the  unqualified  rights  of  an  American  citizen.  He  is  an 
apostle  of  impatience. 

Third,  is  what  may  best  be  called  the  Booker  Washington 
school  of  leadership.  This  type  of  leadership  covets  the  best 
for  the  race  no  less  than  do  the  two  schools  just  mentioned,  but 
frankly  recognizes  the  existence  of  race  prejudice  and  puts  its 
faith  in  evolution  rather  than  in  edicts. 


RELATIONS    OF    THE    ADVANCED    AND    THE 
BACKWARD  RACES  OF  MANKIND1 

When  two  races  differing  in  strength,  that  is  to  say,  either 
in  numbers,  or  in  physical  capacity,  or  in  mental  capacity,  or  in 
material  advancement,  or  in  military  resources,  come  into  polit 
ical  or  social  contact  some  one  of  four  possible  results  follows. 
Either  the  weaker  race  dies  out  before  the  stronger,  or  it  is 
absorbed  into  the  stronger,  the  latter  remaining  practically 
unaffected,  or  the  two  become  mingled  into  something  different 
from  what  either  was  before,  or,  finally,  the  two  continue  to 
dwell  together  unmixed,  each  preserving  a  character  of  its  own. 

1  From  Romane's  lecture  by  James  Bryce,  D.C.L.,  delivered  in  the 
Sheldonian  Theater,  Oxford,  June  7,  1902.  Oxford,  Clarendon  Press. 
1902. 


70  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

These  cases  of  Contact  without  Fusion  arise  in  three  ways. 
Sometimes  an  Advanced  Race  conquers  a  territory  inhabited  by 
a  race  far  beneath  itself  in  military  force,  and  rules  that 
territory  as  a  dependency  without  settling  its  own  people  there. 
This  happens  in  the  case  of  tropical  countries,  which  are  either 
ill-suited  to  the  natives  of  cold  climates  or  are  already  thickly 
peopled.  The  conspicuous  instance  is  India,  to  which  England 
sends  no  more  of  her  children  than  are  needed  to  administer 
and  to  garrison  it,  to  plead  causes  and  supervise  commercial 
business.  Java  under  the  Dutch,  Madagascar  under  the  French, 
East  Africa  under  the  Germans,  Luzon  under  the  Americans,  are 
other  familiar  examples. 

Another  class  of  cases  arises  when  into  a  country  already 
inhabited  by  a  civilized  people  there  come  in  quest  of  work 
groups  of  immigrants  belonging  to  a  much  more  backward  race 
which  has  begun  to  overflow  its  own  borders.  The  influx  of  the 
Chinese  into  Western  America  and  Australia  is  the  most  familiar 
but  not  the  only  instance. 

Thirdly,  there  are  the  cases  in  which  an  Advanced  and  a 
Backward  race  find  themselves  living  side  by  side  in  large 
masses  upon  the  same  soil,  having  entered  it  at  different  times. 
Instances  are  found  in  the  former  Slave  States  of  North 
America,  where  seven  millions  of  Negroes  and  fourteen  millions 
of  whites  dwell  together;  in  Algeria,  in  British  South  Africa, 
and  in  Western  South  America,  in  both  of  which  latter  regions 
the  numerical  preponderance  of  the  Backward  races  is  very 
great,  though  for  South  America  no  trustworthy  statistics  exist. 

To  whichever  of  these  categories  the  contact  of  races  refusing 
to  blend  belongs,  such  contact  is  calculated  to  give  trouble,  and 
the  more  frequently  individual  members  of  the  races  come  across 
one  another,  the  greater  is  that  trouble  likely  to  be.  Where  the 
two  races  occupy  different  parts  of  the  country,  or  where  one 
is  mainly  rural,  the  other  mainly  urban,  or  where  the  habits  of 
life  are  so  dissimilar  that  opportunities  for  social  intercourse 
occur  but  sparingly,  occasions  for  collision  may  be  few.  This 
has  been  the  case  over  most  of  Spanish  America,  and  is  to  a 
great  extent  true  also  of  Algeria.  But  where  the  races  live 
in  the  same  towns  and  villages,  and  follow  the  same  pursuits, 
antagonism  is  sure  to  arise.  It  arises  from  Inequality,  because 
as  one  of  the  races  is  stronger  in  intelligence  and  will,  its 
average  members  treat  members  of  the  weaker  race  scornfully 


THE   NEGRO   PROBLEM  71 

or  roughly,  when  they  can  do  so  with  impunity.  It  arises  from 
Dissimilarity  of  character,  because  neither  race  understands 
the  other's  way  of  thinking  and  feeling,  so  that  each  gives 
offence  even  without  meaning  it.  It  arises  from  Distrust, 
because  the  sense  of  not  comprehending  one  another  makes 
each  suspect  the  other  of  faithlessness  or  guile.  The  Backward 
race,  being  the  weaker,  is  usually  that  which  tries  to  protect 
itself  by  guile,  while  the  more  advanced  race  relies  upon  the 
prestige  of  its  knowledge,  the  force  of  its  will,  and  its  ingrained 
habit  of  dominance.  Violence,  when  once  it  breaks  out,  is  apt 
to  spread,  because  the  men  of  each  race  take  sides  in  any 
tumult,  and  apt  to  be  accompanied  by  cruelty,  because  pity  is 
blunter  toward  those  who  stand  outside  the  racial  or  social 
pale,  and  the  passions  of  a  racial  conflict  sweep  all  but  the 
gentlest  natures  away.  Every  outrage  on  one  side  provokes  an 
outrage  on  the  other:  and  if  a  series  of  outrages  occur,  each 
race  bands  itself  together  for  self-defence,  awaiting  attack,  and 
probably  provoking  attack  by  the  alarm  its  combination  inspires. 
Nor  are  difficulties  in  the  sphere  of  industry  wanting,  for  the 
more  advanced  race  may  refuse  to  work  in  company  with  the 
Backward  one,  or  may  seek  to  relegate  the  latter  to  the  basest 
and  worst-paid  kinds  of  work.  So  too  the  Backward  race  may 
give  offence  by  working  for  lower  wages  and  thus  reducing  the 
general  scale  of  payment. 

These  troubles  may  be  apprehended  whatever  the  form  of 
government,  for  they  spring  out  of  the  nature  of  things.  But 
others  vex  the  political  sphere.  If  one  race  enjoys  privileges 
denied  to  the  other,  it  is  sure  to  abuse  its  power  to  the  prejudice 
of  the  Backward  people,  placing  them,  it  may  be,  under  civil 
as  well  as  political  disabilities,  or  imposing  heavier  taxes  upon 
them,  or  refusing  them  their  fair  share  of  benefits  from  the 
public  revenue.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  both  races  are  treated 
alike,  granted  the  same  suffrage,  made  eligible  for  the  same 
offices,  each  will  be  disposed  to  organize  itself  separately  for 
political  purposes,  so  that  a  permanent  separation  of  parties 
will  be  created,  which,  because  irrespective  of  the  issues  that 
naturally  arise  from  time  to  time,  may  prevent  those  issues  from 
being  dealt  with  on  their  merits,  and  may  check  the  natural 
ebbs  and  flows  of  political  life.  The  nation  will,  in  fact,  be 
rather  two  nations  than  one,  may  waste  its  force  on  internal 
dissensions,  may  lose  its  unity  of  action  at  moments  of  public 


72  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

danger.  Evils  of  this  order  tend  to  be  more  acute  the  more 
democratic  a  government  becomes.  Two  courses  are  open,  but 
each  will  have  elements  of  danger.  If  political  privileges  are 
refused  to  the  Backward  race,  the  contrast  between  principle 
and  practice,  between  a  theoretic  recognition  of  the  rights  of 
man  as  man  and  the  denial  of  them  to  a  section  of  the  population, 
will  be  palpable  and  indefensible.  If  that  lower  section  be 
admitted  to  share  in  the  government,  an  element  will  be  admitted 
the  larger  part  of  which  will  be  unfit  for  the  suffrage,  being 
specially  accessible  to  bribery  and  specially  liable  to  intimidation. 
So,  too,  though  the  evils  described  may  exist  whatever  be  the 
condition  of  the  lower  race,  they  will  become,  in  one  sense  at 
least,  more  accentuated  the  more  that  race  advances  in  intelligence 
and  knowledge.  Slaves  or  serfs  who  have  been  bred  up  to  look 
upon  subjection  as  their  natural  lot  bear  it  as  the  dispensation 
of  Nature.  When  they  have  attained  a  measure  of  independence, 
when  they  speak  the  tongue  and  read  the  books  and  begin  to 
share  the  ideas  of  the  dominant  race,  they  resent  the  inferiority, 
be  it  legal  or  social,  to  which  they  find  themselves  condemned. 
Discontent  appears  and  social  friction  is  intensified,  not  only 
because  occasions  for  it  grow  more  frequent,  but  because  the 
temper  of  each  race  is  more  angry  and  suspicious.  These 
phenomena,  present  even  where  the  races  are  not  very  diverse 
in  habits  of  life  or  level  of  culture,  as  is  the  case  with  Greeks, 
Armenians,  and  Turks  in  various  parts  of  the  East,  or  with 
Moors  and  Jews  in  Morocco,  may  become  of  graver  import  as 
between  races  so  far  apart  as  whites  and  Negroes  in  the  Gulf 
States  of  North  America,  or  whites  and  Malays  in  the  Philippine 
Isles,  or  Europeans  and  native  fellahin  in  Egypt. 

Although  the  troubles  which  follow  upon  the  contact  of 
peoples  in  different  stages  of  civilization  are  more  serious  in 
some  countries  and  under  some  conditions  than  they  are  likely 
to  prove  in  others,  they  are  always  serious  enough  to  raise  the 
question  of  the  best  means  of  avoiding  such  a  contact,  if  it  can 
be  avoided. 

That  contact  can  be  averted  by  inducing  European  peoples  to 
forbear  from  annexing  or  settling  in  the  countries  inhabited  by 
the  coloured  races  is  not  to  be  expected.  The  impulses  which 
move  these  peoples  in  the  present  will  not  be  checked  by  the 
prospect  of  evils  in  the  future.  Besides,  the  work  of  annexation 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  73 

is  practically  done  already.1  Neither  can  it  be  suggested  that 
one  of  two  disparate  races  already  established  should  be  removed 
to  leave  the  ground  free  to  the  other.  No  one  proposes  that 
the  French  should  quit  Algeria,  or  the  English  India,  or  the 
Russians  Western  Turkistan,  not  to  add  that  the  mischiefs  likely 
to  follow  such  a  withdrawal  would  be  greater  than  the  diffi 
culties  which  the  presence  of  the  conquerors  at  this  moment 
causes.  Men  talked  at  one  time  of  deporting  the  seven  millions 
of  Negroes  from  the  Southern  States  of  America  to  Africa, 
but  this  utterly  impracticable  scheme  has  been  dropped.  The 
only  case  in  which  the  question  of  preventing  contact  arises  in 
a  practical  form  is  where  immigrants  of  a  Backward  race  are 
found  swarming  into  a  country  already  peopled  by  a  European 
stock.  Such  a  case  has  arisen  in  California  and  British  Columbia, 
whither  Chinese  have  migrated,  as  also  in  Australia  as  respects 
Chinese,  and  Japanese,  and  Indian  coolies,  and  in  Natal.  In 
all  these  cases  statutes  have  been  passed  intended  to  arrest  or  to 
limit  the  influx  of  the  Backward  race :  and  in  California  and 
Australia,  where  the  methods  have  been  most  stringent,  the 
desired  result  is  being  attained. 


NEGRO  PROBLEM2 

The  American  Negro  problem  is  the  question  of  the  future 
status  of  the  ten  million  Americans  of  Negro  descent.  It  must 
be  remembered  that  these  persons  are  Americans  by  birth  and 
descent.  They  represent,  for  the  most  part,  four  or  five  American 
born  generations,  being  in  that  respect  one  of  the  most  American 
groups  in  the  land.  Moreover,  the  Negroes  are  not  barbarians. 
They  are,  as  a  mass,  poor  and  ignorant;  but  they  are  growing 
rapidly  in  both  wealth  and  intelligence,  and  larger  and  larger 
numbers  of  them  demand  the  rights  and  privileges  of  American 
citizens  as  a  matter  of  undoubted  desert. 

Today  these  rights  are  largely  denied.  In  order  to  realize 
the  disabilities  under  which  Negroes  suffer  regardless  of 

1  Except,   as   already   observed,   in   the  Near   East   and  in   China. 

*From  article,  Negro  race  in  the  United  States  of  America,  by  Dr. 
W.  E.  B.  DuBois  New  York,  late  professor  of  history  and  political  economy 
in  Atlanta  University.  Universal  Races  Congress.  Papers  on  inter-racial 
problems,  p.  348-64.  July,  1911. 


74  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

education,  wealth,  or  degree  of  white  blood,  we  may  divide  the 
United    States    into   three   districts. 

(a)     The    Southern    South,    containing   75   per   cent,    of   the 

Negroes, 
(ft)     The    border    States,    containing    15    per    cent,    of    the 

Negroes, 
(c)     The  North  and  West,  containing   10  per  cent,  of  the 

Negroes. 

In  the  Southern  South  by  law  or  custom  Negroes — 
*-""    i.     Cannot  vote,  or  their  votes  are  neutralised  by  fraud. 

2.  Must  usually  live  in  the  least  desirable  districts. 

3.  Receive  very  low  wages. 

4.  Are,  in  the  main,  restricted  to  menial  occupations  or  the 
lower  grades  of  skilled  labour  and  cannot  expect  preferment  or 
promotion. 

5.  Cannot  by  law  intermarry  with  whites. 

6.  Cannot  join  white  churches  or  attend  white  colleges  or 
join  white  cultural  organisations. 

7.  Cannot  be  accommodated  at  hotels  and  restaurants  or  in 
any  place  of  public  entertainment. 

8.  Receive  a  distinct  standard  of  justice  in  the  courts  and 
are  especially  liable  to  mob  violence. 

9.  Are  segregated  as  far  as  possible  in  every  walk  of  life — 
in    railway   stations,    railway   trains,    street-cars,    lifts,    &c.,    and 
usually  made  to  pay  equal  prices  for  inferior  accommodations. 

10.  Are  often  unable  to  protect  their  homes  from  invasion, 
their  women   from  insult,   and  their  savings   from  exploitation. 

n.  Are  taxed  for  public  facilities  like  parks  and  libraries, 
which  they  may  not  enter. 

12.  Are  given  meagre  educational  facilities  and  sometimes 
none  at  all. 

13.  Are    liable    to    personal    insult    unless    they    appear    as 
servants  or  menials  or  show  deference  to  white  folks  by  yielding 
the  road,  &c. 

To  many  of  these  disabilities  there  are  personal  and  local 
exceptions.  In  cities,  for  instance,  the  chance  to  defend  the 
home,  get  an  education,  and  somewhat  better  wages  is  greater, 
and  mob  violence  less  frequent.  Then  there  are  always  some 
personal  exceptions — cases  of  help  and  courtesy,  of  justice  in 
the  courts,  and  of  good  schools.  These  are,  however,  exceptions, 
and,  as  a  rule,  all  Negroes,  no  matter  what  their  training, 


THE   NEGRO   PROBLEM  75 

possessions,  or  desert,  are  subjected  to  the  above  disabilities. 
Within  the  limits  of  these  caste  restrictions  there  is  much  good 
will  and  kindliness  between  the  races,  and  especially  much 
personal  charity  and  help. 

The  15  per  cent,  of  the  Negro  population  living  on  the  border 
States  suffer  a  little  less  restriction.  They  have  some  right  of 
voting,  are  better  able  to  defend  their  homes,  and  are  less 
discriminated  against  in  the  expenditure  of  public  funds.  In 
the  cities  their  schools  are  much  better  and  public  insult  is  less 
noticeable. 

In  the  North  the  remaining  10  per  cent,  of  the  Negro  popu 
lation  is  legally  undiscriminated  against  and  may  attend  schools 
and  churches  and  vote  without  restriction.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
however,  they  are  made  in  most  communities  to  feel  that  they 
are  undesirable.  They  are  either  refused  accommodation  at 
hotels,  restaurants,  and  theatres,  or  received  reluctantly.  Their 
treatment  in  churches  and  general  cultural  organisations  is  such 
that  few  join.  Intermarriage  with  whites  brings  ostracism  and 
public  disfavour,  and  in  courts  Negroes  often  suffer  undeservedly. 
Common  labour  and  menial  work  is  open  to  them,  but  avenues 
above  this  in  skilled  labour  or  the  professions  (save  as  they 
serve  their  own  race),  are  extremely  difficult  to  enter,  and  there 
is  much  discrimination  in  wages.  Mob  violence  has  become  not 
infrequent  in  later  years. 

There  are  here  also  many  exceptional  cases ;  instances  of  pre 
ferment  in  the  industrial  and  political  world ;  and  there  is  always 
some  little  social  intercourse.  On  the  whole,  however,  the  Negro 
in  the  north  is  an  ostracised  person  who  finds  it  difficult  to 
make  a  good  living  or  spend  his  earnings  with  pleasure. 

Under  these  circumstances  there  has  grown  up  a  Negro 
world  in  America  which  has  its  own  economic  and  social  life, 
its  churches,  schools,  and  newspapers;  its  literature,  public 
opinion,  and  ideals.  This  life  is  largely  unnoticed  and  unknown 
even  in  America,  and  travellers  miss  it  almost  entirely. 

The  average  American  in  the  past  made  at  least  pretence 
of  excusing  the  discrimination  against  Negroes,  on  the  ground 
of  their  ignorance  and  poverty  and  their  tendencies  to  crime 
and  disease.  While  the  mass  is  still  poor  and  unlettered,  it  is 
admitted  by  all  today  that  the  Negro  is  rapidly  developing  a 
larger  and  larger  class  of  intelligent  property-holding  men  of 
Negro  descent;  notwithstanding  this  more  and  more  race  lines 


76  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

are  being  drawn  which  involve. the  treatment  of  civilised  men 
in  an  uncivilised  manner.  Moreover,  the  crux  of  the  question 
today  is  not  merely  a  matter  of  social  eligibility.  For  many 
generations  the  American  Negro  will  lack  the  breeding  and 
culture  which  the  most  satisfactory  human  intercourse  requires. 
But  in  America  the  discrimination  against  Negroes  goes  beyond 
this,  to  the  point  of  public  discourtesy,  civic  disability,  injustice 
in  the  courts,  and  economic  restriction. 

The  argument  of  those  who  uphold  this  discrimination  is  based 
primarily  on  race.  They  claim  that  the  inherent  characteristics 
of  the  Negro  race  show  its  essential  inferiority  and  the  impojsi- 
ETlity  of  incorporating  its  descendants  into  the  American  nation. 
TH^"liHmTt  IMTTh^^^  to  tht5"Tute~i5f  interionty, 

but  claim  that  these  but  prove  the  rule.  .They  say  that  amal 
gamation  of  the  races  would  be  fatal  to  civilisation  and  they 
advocate  therefore  a  strict  caste  system  for  Negroes,  segregating 
them  by  occupations  and  privileges,  and  to  some  extent  by 
dwelling-place,  to"  the  end  thafthey  (a)  submit  permanently  to 
an  inferior" position,  or  (&)  die  out,  or  (c)  migrate. 

This  philosophy  the  thinking  Negroes  and  a  large  number  of 

white   friends  vigorously  combat.     They  claim   that  the   racial 

\     differences  between  white  and  black  in  the  United  States  offer 

\    no   essential   barrier   to   the    races   living  together   on   terms   of 

J    mutual  respect  and  helpfulness.     They  deny,  on  the  one  hand, 

c\     that  the  large  amalgamation  of  the  races  already  accomplished 

has    produced    degenerates,    in    spite    of    the    unhappy    character 

/     of  these  unions;   on   the   other  hand,   they   deny  any  desire  to 

/      lose  the  identity   of   either   race  through   intermarriage.     They 

/       claim  that  it  should  be  possible  for  a  civilised  black  man  to  be 

!        treated  as  an  American  citizen  without  harm   to   the   republic, 

I        and  that  the  modern  world  must  learn  to  treat  coloured  races 

\^  as  equals  if  it  expects  to   advance. 

They  claim  that  the  Negro  race  in  America  has  more  than 

(  vindicated  its  ability  to  assimilate  modern  culture.     Negro  blood 

\    has  furnished  thousands  of  soldiers  to  defend  the  flag  in  every 

c<     war  in  which  the  United  States  has  been  engaged.     They  are  a 

)    most  important  part  of  the  economic  strength  of  the  nation,  and 

/     they  have    furnished   a   number   of    men    of    ability   in   politics, 

literature,  and  art,  as,  for  instance,  Banneker,  the  mathematician ; 

V_Phillis  Wheatley,  the  poet;  Lemuel  Haynes,  the  theologian;  Ira 

~Aldridge,    the    actor;    Frederick    Douglass,    the    orator;    H.    O. 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  77 

Tanner,  the  artist;   B.  T.  Washington,  the  educator;   Granville 
Woods,  the  inventor,  Kelly  Miller,  the  writer;  Rosamond  John 
son  and  Will  Cook,  the  musical  composers;  Dunbar,  the  poet; 
and  Chestnut,  the  novelist.    Many  other  Americans,  whose  Negro 
blood   has   not   been   openly   acknowledged,   have    reached   high 
/distinction.    The  Negroes  claim,  therefore,  that  a  discrimination] 
\  which  was  originally  based  on  certain  social  conditions  is  rapidlyC 
"i  becoming  a  persecution  based  simply  on  race  prejudice,  and  thatl 
/  no  republic  built  on  caste  can  survive^^  J 

p<  At  the  meeting  of  two  such  diametrically  opposed  arguments 
it  was  natural  that  councils  of  compromise  should  appear,  and  it 
was  also  natural  that  a  nation,  whose  economic  triumphs  have 
been  so  noticeable  as  those  of  the  United  States,  should  seek 
an  economic  solution  to  the  race  question.  More  and  more  in 
the  last  twenty  years  the  business  men's  solution  of  the  race 
problem  has  been  the  development  of  the  resources  of  the 
South.  Coincident  with  the  rise  of  this  policy  came  the  prom 
inence  of  Mr.  B.  T.  Washington.  Mr.  Washington  was  con 
vinced  that  race  prejudice  in  America  was  so  strong  and  the 
economic  position  of  the  freedmen's  sons  so  weak  that  the 
Negro  must  give  up  or  postpone  his  ambitions  for  full  citizenship 
and  bend  all  his  energies  to  industrial  efficiency  and  the  accumu 
lation  of  wealth.  Mr.  Washington's  idea  was  that  eventually 
when  the  dark  man  was  thoroughly  established  in  the  industries 
and  had  accumulated  wealth,  he  could  demand  further  rights  and 
privileges.  This  philosophy  has  become  very  popular  in  the 
United  States,  both  among  whites  and  blacks. 

The  white  South  hastened  to  welcome  this  philosophy.  They 
thought  it  would  take  the  Negro  out  of  politics,  tend  to  stop 
agitation,  make  the  Negro  a  satisfied  labourer,  and  eventually 
convince  him  that  he  could  never  be  recognised  as  the  equal 
of  the  white  man.  The  North  began  to  give  large  sums  for 
industrial  training,  and  hoped  in  this  way  to  get  rid  of  a  serious 
social  problem. 

From  the  beginning  of  this  campaign,  however,  a  large  class 
of  Negroes  and  many  whites  feared  this  programme.  They  not 
only  regarded  it  as  a  programme  which  was  a  dangerous  com 
promise,  but  they  insisted  that  to  stop  fighting  the  essential 
wrong  of  race  prejudice  just  at  the  time,  was  to  encourage  it. 

This  was  precisely  what  happened.  Mr.  Washington's  pro 
gramme  was  announced  at  the  Atlanta  Exposition  in  1896 


7«  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

Since  that  time  four  states  have  disfranchised  Negroes,  dozens 
of  cities  and  towns  have  separated  the  races  on  street  cars,  1,250 
Negroes  have  been  publicly  lynched  without  trial,  and  serious 
race  riots  have  taken  place  in  nearly  every  Southern  State 
and  several  Northern  States,  Negro  public  school  education  has 
suffered  a  set  back,  and  many  private  schools  have  been  forced 
to  retrench  severely  or  to  close.  On  the  whole,  race  prejudice 
has,  during  the  last  fifteen  years,  enormously  increased. 

This  has  been  coincident  with  the  rapid  and  substantial 
advance  of  Negroes  in  wealth,  education,  and  morality,  and  the 
two  movements  of  race  prejudice  and  Negro  advance  have  led 
to  an  anomalous  and  unfortunate  situation.  Some,  white  and 
black,  seek  to  minimise  and  ignore  the  flaming  prejudice  in  the 
land,  and  emphasise  many  acts  of  friendliness  on  the  part  of 
the  white  South,  and  the  advance  of  the  Negro.  Others,  on  the 
other  hand,  point  out  that  silence  and  sweet  temper  are  not 
going  to  settle  this  dangerous  social  problem,  and  that  manly 
protest  and  the  publication  of  the  whole  truth  is  alone  adequate 
to  arouse  the  nation  to  its  great  danger. 

Moreover,  many  careful  thinkers  insist  that,  under  the  circum 
stances,  the  "business  men's"  solution  of  the  race  problem  is 
bound  to  make  trouble:  if  the  Negroes  become  good  cheap 
labourers,  warranted  not  to  strike  or  complain,  they  will  arouse 
all  the  latent  prejudice  of  the  white  working  men  whose  wages 
they  bring  down.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  they  are  to  be  really 
educated  as  men,  and  not  as  "hands,"  then  they  need,  as  a  race, 
not  only  industrial  training,  but  also  a  supply  of  well-educated, 
intellectual  leaders  and  professional  men  for  a  group  so  largely 
deprived  of  contact  with  the  cultural  leaders  of  the  whites. 
Moreover,  the  best  thought  of  the  nation  is  slowly  recognising 
the  fact  that  to  try  to  educate  a  working  man,  and  not  to  educate 
the  man,  is  impossible.  If  the  United  States  wants  intelligent 
Negro  labourers,  it  must  be  prepared  to  treat  them  as  intelligent 
men. 

This  counter  movement  of  intelligent  men,  white  and  black, 
against  the  purely  economic  solution  of  the  race  problem,  has 
been  opposed  by  powerful  influences  both  North  and  South. 
The  South  represents  it  as  malicious  sectionalism,  and  the 
North  misunderstands  it  as  personal  dislike  and  envy  of  Mr. 
Washington.  Political  pressure  has  been  brought  to  bear,  and 
this  insured  a  body  of  coloured  political  leaders  who  do  not 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  79 

agitate  for  Negro  rights.  At  the  same  time,  a  chain  of  Negro 
newspapers  were  established  to  advocate  the  dominant  philosophy. 
Despite  the  well-intentioned  effort  to  keep  down  the  agitation 
of  the  Negro  question  and  mollify  the  coloured  people,  the 
problem  has  increased  in  gravity.  The  result  is  the  present 
widespread  unrest  and  dissatisfaction.  Honest  Americans  know 
that  present  conditions  are  wrong  and  cannot  last ;  but  they  face, 
on  the  one  hand,  the  seemingly  implacable  prejudice  of  the 
South,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  the  undoubted  rise  of  the  Negro 
challenging  that  prejudice.  The  attempt  to  reconcile  these  two 
forces  is  becoming  increasingly  futile,  and  the  nation  simply 
faces  the  question:  Are  we  willing  to  do  justice  to  a  dark  race 
despite  our  prejudices?  Radical  suggestions  of  wholesale  segre 
gation  or  deportation  of  the  race  have  now  and  then  been 
suggested;  but  the  cost  in  time,  effort,  money,  and  economic 
disturbance  is  too  staggering  to  allow  serious  consideration. 
The  South,  with  all  its  race  prejudice,  would  rather  fight  than 
lose  its  great  black  labouring  force,  and  in  every  walk  of  life 
throughout  the  nation  the  Negro  is  slowly  forcing  his  way.  There 
are  some  signs  that  the  prejudice  in  the  South  is  not  immovable, 
and  now  and  then  voices  of  protest  and  signs  of  liberal  thought 
appear  there.  Whether  at  last  the  Negro  will  gain  full 
recognition  as  a  man,  or  be  utterly  crushed  by  prejudice  and 
superior  numbers,  is  the  present  Negro  problem  of  America. 


PROPOSED  SOLUTION  OF  THE  RACE 
PROBLEM  1 

The  race  question  is  not  at  all  what  is  generally  understood 
by  an  "academic  question,"— one,  that  is,  having  no  direct 
bearing  on  our  everyday  life.  It  comes  home  to  us  all  in  the 
South  everyday,  and  in  a  thousand  ways;  ways  too  subtle  to  be 
seen  without  close  observation;  others  also  too  evident  to  be 
overlooked  by  even  the  most  obtuse. 

Institutions  of  learning  are  being  brought  into  closer  relations 
with  our  everyday  life,  and  in  these  academic  shades  we  ought 
to  be  able  to  study  subjects  more  nearly  in  what  Lord  Bacon 
calls  the  "dry  light  of  reason." 

1  From  address  by  Dr.  Charles  Breckenridge  Wilner  in  the  Conference 
on  Southern  Problems,  held  at  Sewanee,  Tenn.,  July  4-?,  1909.  1-lorensic 
Quarterly.  1:144-77.  June,  1910. 


8o  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

And  what  subject  stands  for  its  right  consideration,  in  so 
great  need  of  such  "dry-light"  such  freedom  from  all  prejudice 
as  the  "Race  Problem?"  or  more  requires  that  we  bear  in  mind 
those  weighty  words  of  Bishop  Butler  that  moved  Matthew 
Arnold  to  so  much  admiration ;  "Things  are  what  they  are  and 
the  consequences  will  be  what  they  will  be ;  why  should  we 
deceive  ourselves?"  In  the  language  of  another  great  man, 
"it  is  a  condition  and  not  a  theory  that  confronts  us"  in  the 
South.  The  consequences  of  doing  or  neglecting  to  do  certain 
things  are  going  to  be  determined,  not  only  by  our  wishes  or 
prejudices,  but  by  the  operation  of  that  great  law,  which  no 
man  may  control, — of  Cause  and  Effect.  I  say  this  particularly 
of  and  for  us  Southerners.  Yet  the  common  remark  that  the 
race  problem  is  the  Southerner's  problem,  is  both  true  and  false. 
It  is  ours  in  the  sense  that  we  know  the  facts  of  the  situation 
at  first  hand;  that  we  must  agree  on  what  to  do  and  do  it;  that 
the  consequences  of  right  or  wrong  action,  wise  or  unwise 
policies,  will  be  visited  more  especially  upon  us  and  our  posterity. 
But  it  is  not  true  in  the  sense  that  the  North  has  no  legitimate 
interest  in  the  right  or  wrong  settlement  of  our  difficulties,  or 
that  we  do  not  need  advice  from  anybody  but  ourselves.  We  may 
object,  and  I  think  rightly,  to  having  any  policy  forced  upon  us 
from  outside.  But  I  am  free  to  say  that  I  want  the  advice  of 
intelligent,  sympathetic,  students  of  social  problems  East  and 
West  People  standing  too  close  to  an  object  may  fail  to  see 
some  things  as  well  as  people  standing  at  a  little  distance.  If 
it  seems  to  some  of  us  in  the  South  that  the  people  of  the  North 
see  a  little  too  much  of  the  millennium  and  too  little  of  the 
actual  Negro,  it  may  be  that,  reversing  the  case,  the  pressure  of 
practical  everyday  problems,  and  contact  and  conflict  with  the 
Negro  as  he  is  may  cause  us  to  lose  or  lower  our  ideals  for  the 
human  race. 

It  ought  also  to  be  pointed  out  to  the  people  of  the  South 
that  the  race  problem,  the  question  of  how  the  different  races 
of  the  world  are  to  get  along  amicably,  is  a  world  problem. 
And  there  is  no  problem  so  local  or  so  small,  that  will  not  be 
illuminated  by  being  looked  at  in  the  light  of  universal  experi 
ence  and  universal  need. 

The  mental  attitude  in  which  we  must  approach  the  subject 
is  all  important  and  I  should  say  that  the  correct  mental  atti 
tude  must  at  least  include  such  truths  as  the  following: 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  81 

First,  a  recognition  of  the  great  truth  stated  by  Bishop  Butler 
to  which  I  have  already  referred,  viz.,  that  "things  are  what 
they  are,  and  the  consequences  will  be  what  they  will  be.  Why 
deceive  ourselves?"  There  is  a  lack  of  recognition  among  us, 
I  am  venturing  to  observe,  of  such  a  science  as  sociology.  There 
is  much  hope  for  the  future  in  the  individuality  of  Southern 
men.  But  in  order  that  such  hope  may  be  realized,  we  need 
to  wake  up  to  the  operation  of  the  law  of  cause  and  effect  in 
human  society.  Little  things  that  we  are  apt  to  think  of  as 
beginning  and  ending  with  the  individual,  or  with  a  few  indi 
viduals,  really  ramify  throughout  the  whole  social  structure. 
An  unjust  word,  an  unkind  word  spoken  by  a  white  person  in 
the  presence  of  a  colored  person,  and  about  that  person,  does 
not  end  there.  He  or  she  tells  somebody  else.  It  gets  to  the 
cook  in  the  kitchen,  the  butler  in  the  dining  room,  the  driver 
out  in  the  stable,  and  their  friends  and  their  friends'  friends, 
and  widens  in  ever  expanding  circles,  like  the  ripples  in  a  lake 
when  a  pebble  is  dropped  in  the  midst.  Many  a  crime  has 
shocked  a  community  which  had  its  origin,  beyond  doubt,  if 
the  whole  truth  were  known,  in  some  such  pebble.  Let  us 
have  regard  to  the  law  of  social  consequence. 

A  second  truth  we  need  to  recognize  is  that  in  the  final  out 
come  of  human  affairs,  merit  is  going  to  win;  individual  merit. 
We  believe  in  the  superiority  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  race.  Some 
Southerners  are  given  to  calling  attention  to  this  superiority 
rather  frequently  and  rather  loudly.  Mr.  Alfred  Holt  Stone 
(I  think  it  was)  has  well  said  that  "Only  the  white  man  writes 
volumes  to  establish  on  paper  the  fact  of  a  superiority  which  is 
either  self-evident  and  not  in  need  of  demonstration  on  the  one 
hand;  or  is  not  a  fact  and  is  not  demonstrable  on  the  other." 

Underneath  much  of  the  talk  about  the  inferiority  of  the 
Negro  lies  but  ill  concealed  the  fear  of  a  greater  capacity  than 
we  have  been  in  the  habit  of  allowing  to  him,  and  a  fear  that  he 
will  "make  good"  beyond  our  expectations  or  desires.  Per 
sonally  I  have  no  fear  about  the  continued  supremacy  of  the 
white  race,  but  rather  that  we  may  seek  for  supremacy  in  false 
ways.  We  must  face  the  problem  of  individual  merit  more 
largely  and  more  honestly  than  we  have  hitherto  done,  although 
I  believe  we  are  not  as  culpable  in  that  respect  as  we  are  some 
times  thought  to  be.  Mr.  Lecky  has  well  said  that  one  of  the 
greatest  forces  for  the  moral  uplift  of  any  race  lies  in  an  outlet 


82  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

at  the  top  for  its  men  of  talent  and  character.  We  must  teach 
our  young  men  not  to  claim  superior  capacity,  and  also  expect 
special  privileges.  A  race  horse  that  claims  the  ability  to  out 
run  his  rival  has  surely  no  need  to  hamstring  that  rival.  And 
for  us  of  the  South,  as  for  the  whole  world,  the  recognition  and 
reward  of  merit  is  the  true  touchstone  of  civilization.  It  is  the 
rock  on  which  we  will  build  and  be  safe,  or  on  which  we  will 
fall  and  be  broken. 

The  third  element  that  should  enter  into  our  mental  attitude, 
is,  that  true  loyalty  to  the  South  is  loyalty  to  the  Truth,  what 
ever  that  is,  or  wherever  it  may  be  found.  There  was  a  man 
once  who  was  so  well  satisfied  with  having  been  born  in  his 
State  that  he  could  with  difficulty  be  persuaded  of  the  necessity 
of  being  born  anew.  But  we  need,  all  of  us  everywhere,  to  be 
born  anew  of  the  truth.  And  he  only  is  a  true  friend  to  the 
South  who  understands  that  there  is  no  loyalty  worthy  the  name 
that  is  not  loyalty  to  the  truth.  There  is  no  enemy  like  a  flat 
terer.  Blind  partisanship  is  the  foe  of  loyalty  and  of  wisdom. 

No  true  and  lasting  solution  is  to  be  found  for  any  problem 
of  importance  that  is  not  based  on  religion,  on  God's  Will.  I 
know  this  belongs  to  sermons,  and  I  have  not  been  asked  to 
preach.  I  know  also  that  religion  is  not  popularly  supposed  to 
have  very  much  to  do  with  this  present  world.  But  I  do  not 
share  that  view.  "Be  not  unwise,"  wrote  the  Apostle  Paul, 
"but  understanding  what  the  Will  of  the  Lord  is."  The  Will 
of  the  Lord  is  that  force  which  is  carrying  on  this  universe.  It 
is  the  "infinite  and  eternal  energy  from  which  all  things  pro 
ceed."  In  what  consists  wisdom  if  not  in  finding  out  what  is 
that  "One  far  off  divine  event  to  which  the  whole  creation 
moves"  and  getting  into  line  with  the  process  leading  to  it? 
Can  we  do  that,  and  leave  God  out?  Now  I  take  it,  that  God 
has  a  purpose  in  all  that  He  does,  and  that  He  must  have  a 
place  for  every  race  and  tribe  of  men  that  He  has  made.  The 
Negroes,  then,  are  on  this  earth  by  the  creative  Will  of  God, 
just  as  the  rest  of  us.  Wisdom  would  seem  to  dictate,  that 
instead  of  trying  to  force  our  will  on  the  situation,  we  try  to 
find  out  what  God's  Will  is,  and  conform  thereto.  And  in  try 
ing  to  find  out  what  it  is,  we  will  seek  it  not  only  in  the  general 
principles  of  religious  humanitarianism,  but  in  all  the  anthro 
pological  evidence  afforded  by  the  history  and  nature  of  the 
Negro. 


THE   NEGRO   PROBLEM  83 

So  much  for  the  general  mental  attitude  which  we  should 
assume  in  approaching  this  great  subject.  But  there  are  special 
reasons  why  we  of  the  South  should  be  on  our  guard. 

We  have  every  temptation  to  think  with  our  prejudices, 
instead  of  thinking  with  our  heads.  The  truth  is,  we  have 
had  "a  hard  time."  We  may  have  been  wrong,  but  no  man 
can  deny  that  we  have  suffered.  We  were  permitted  by  the 
Constitution  to  own  slaves.  The  slaves  then  were  taken  from 
us  by  the  sword.  Against  all  our  entreaties  and  warnings,  liberty 
was  suddently  thrust  upon  four  millions  of  unprepared  Africans. 
And  that  was  the  least  of  all.  The  attempt  was  made  to  force 
up  these  people  (not  long  emerged  from  barbarism  and  dazzled 
with  the  light  of  liberty  to  which  their  eyes  were  as  yet  unaccus 
tomed)  to  a  plane  of  civic  equality  with  the  Anglo-Saxon  race. 
Done  at  the  point  of  the  bayonet,  after  surrender  in  good  faith 
of  the  defeated  South,  it  was  one  of  the  greatest  crimes  of  all 
history  against  civilization,  and  is  now  being  more  and  more 
acknowledged  to  have  been  such. 

I  am  referring  to  all  this  sad  history,  only  for  the  purpose 
of  putting  ourselves  on  our  guard.  We  think  we  have  been 
wronged.  Well,  suppose  we  have  been;  is  that  a  good  reason 
why  we  should  be  foolish?  We  have  one  of  the  greatest  oppor 
tunities  ever  afforded  a  people  to  rise  above  controversy  and 
passion,  and  prove  our  superiority  by  gaining  a  victory  over 
ourselves. 

Nor  let  us  be  resentful  against  the  Negro  just  for  being  a 
Negro.  He  can't  help  that.  Probably  if  he  had  been  consulted 
he  would  have  elected  to  be  something  else.  Whoever  is 
responsible  for  the  Negro's  presence  in  this  country,  of  all 
America's  polyglot  population,  the  Negro  element  alone  did  not 
come  here  of  its  own  volition.  Neither  let  us  cherish  resent 
ment  against  the  North.  Such  resentment  may  be  natural,  but 
it  is  not  spiritual,  neither  does  it  help  matters.  Besides,  every 
year  brings  the  North  into  sympathetic  relations  with  the  South. 
Let  us  permit  the  dead  past  to  bury  its  dead,  and  address 
ourselves  to  living  issues. 

It  is  astounding  how  many  "solutions"  and  suggestions 
toward  solution  of  the  Race  Problem  at  the  South  are  offered, 
without  any  attempt  to  state  what  the  Problem  is.  Often  what 
is  in  the  mind  of  those  who  speak  of  the  Race  Problem  is  virtu 
ally  how  to  keep  the  Negro  down,  or  "in  his  place,"— whatever 


84  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

that  may  mean.  Again,  in  another  quarter,  it  is  sometimes  said, 
that  there  is  no  "race  problem" ;  only  a  human  problem ;  a 
proposition  which  is  either  a  truism  or  not  true  at  all.  In  the 
sense  in  which  it  is  true,  it  is  remarkably  unilluminating.  Of 
course  it  is  a  human  problem ;  a  problem  concerning  human 
beings,  to  be  solved  by  human  beings.  But  if  the  meaning  be 
that  the  human  problem  is  everywhere  the  same,  the  proposition 
is  not  at  all  true.  The  human  problem,  I  suppose,  is  how 
we  are  to  get  along  peaceably  with  one  another  on  the  earth. 
But  this  essentially  human  problem  assumes  certain  distinctive 
characteristics  in  different  parts  of  the  earth;  and  here  in 
the  South  today  it  may  be  stated  as  follows:  two  alien  races 
must  get  along  peaceably  together  under  one  government,  and 
that — a  government  of  the  people.  As  regards  the  Negro,  the 
problem  is :  How  to  carry  through  the  wilderness,  that  always 
lies  between  Egypt  and  the  Promised  Land,  the  present  gener 
ation,  which  has  not  enjoyed  the  advantages  of  training  under 
slavery,  nor  yet  been  subjected  to  such  discipline  as  would  train 
them  to  adapt  themselves  to  their  new  situation,  with  all  its 
responsibilities ;  in  a  word,  to  induce  the  Negro  to  use  his  liberty 
so  as  to  become  really  free,  and  not  mistake  liberty  for  license, 
much  less — crime !  As  regards  the  whites,  the  problem  is,  to 
adapt  ourselves  to  the  changed  and  changing  situation.  The 
upper-class  whites  must  make  a  sociological  extension  of  their 
old-time  kindly  private  feeling  toward  the  Negro,  being  willing 
not  only  to  hand  him  cheerfully  a  quarter  now  and  then,  and 
be  kind  to  him  as  he  serves  them  in  various  capacities,  but  also 

{  to  give  him  "a  square  deal"  in  life,  with  a  chance  to  make  the 
most  of  himself. 

For  the  lower  class  of  whites,  between  whom  and  the  Negro 

f:the  relations  are  strained,  and  who  are  more  or  less  in  industrial 
competition  with  the  Negro,  the  problem  is  specifically  how  to 

[find  work  for  both,  and  how  to  keep  the  peace  between  them. 
Politically  speaking,  the  problem  is  how  two  such  diverse  races 
can  live  under  a  republican  form  of  government,  which  denies  to 
a  State  the  privilege  of  disfranchising  a  man  on  account  of 
"race,  color,  or  previous  condition  of  servitude,"  and  at  the  same 
time  maintain  Anglo-Saxon  supremacy  without  any  violation 
either  of  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States  or  of  the  Ten 
Commandments.  In  addition  to  all  this,  it  should  be  pointed  out 
that  many  other  problems,  common  to  the  human  race  in  a  state 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  85 

of  civilization  and  progress,  are  with  us,  complicated  by  race 
feeling,  such  as  the  relations  of  labor  and  capital,  strikes,  union 
and  non-union  labor,  etc.  The  races,  moreover,  are  rapidly 
drifting  apart,  and  the  problem  is  to  conserve  as  well  as  possible 
the  good  feeling  there  is,  and  to  build  up,  on  the  basis  of  our 
present  relations,  mutual  respect  and  good  will.  As  regards 
crime,  our  problem  is,  not  only  its  prevention,  by  a  proper 
training  of  the  young,  but  by  the  avoidance  of  making  matters 
worse  through  retaliation. 


NEGRO  IN  THE  NORTH  * 

The  present  drift  of  Negroes  from  the  Southern  to  the 
Northern  States,  in  response  to  the  acute  demand  for  labor,  is 
raising  political,  social  and  economic  questions  that  lay  bare  the 
tie  that  binds  them  to  their  more  fortunate  brethren.  The 
Cincinnati  Post  describes  conditions  in  that  city  that  can  be 
duplicated  in  most  of  the  large  Northern  cities.  Negro  immi 
grants  are  crowding  tenements  from  cellar  to  garret.  In  one 
ward  2,793  between  the  ages  of  21  and  31  registered,  exceeding 
the  number  in  the  next  most  thickly  populated  ward  by  more 
than  600.  These  men,  the  Post  goes  on  to  say,  will  be  voted 
en  bloc,  and  so  determine  the  city's  mayor,  its  judges  and  other 
officials.  The  social  problem  is  still  worse.  Overcrowding 
produces  a  death  rate  of  675  from  tuberculosis  among  the 
Negroes,  as  compared  with  224  among  the  whites.  Some  prog 
ress  had  been  made  by  the  social  workers  who  had  succeeded 
in  reducing  the  Negro  death  rate,  but  they  are  in  despair  in 
face  of  the  present  immigration. 

Is  it  not  a  little  strange  that  such  a  problem  should  have 
risen  at  all?  How  is  it  possible  that  in  the  richest  nation  in  the 
world  there  should  be  enough  native-born  citizens  lacking  an 
understanding  and  appreciation  of  our  institutions  to  threaten 
their  stability?  These  men  are  not  the  neglected  of  other 
nations  thrust  upon  us  full  grown,  but  are  men  born  and  nurtured 
upon  American  soil,  and  subject  throughout  their  lives  to  the 
influence  of  American  institutions.  There  is  not  the  excuse 
even  that  they  were  formerly  slaves,  for  not  one  of  these 
immigrants  was  born  a  slave. 

1  Public.     20:571-2.     June    15,    iQi7- 


86  SELECTED  ARTICLES 

Is  it  not  another  instance  of  Carlyle's  beggar?  Organized 
labor  mobs  the  Negroes  brought  into  strike  regions  because 
they  are  unorganized  and  lack  the  spirit  of  solidarity.  Yet 
organized  labor  has  been  rather  tardy  in  taking  in  the  black 
brother.  Social  workers  despair  at  the  Negro's  indifference  to 
hygienic  laws,  and  the  better  classes  lament  the  possibilities  for 
evil  from  having  such  citizens  congregate  within  control  of 
unscrupulous  politicians.  But  these  neglected  human  beings 
have  been  all  the  time  within  our  borders,  and  these  inevitable 
evils  should  long  ago  have  been  foreseen  by  our  leaders. 

The  ignorant,  shiftless,  unambitious  Negro,  like  the  ignorant, 
shiftless,  unambitious  man  of  any  other  race,  is  a  menace.  And 
since  a  common  sense  of  decency  prevents  their  forcible  removal, 
there  is  nothing  left  for  the  better  classes  to  do  but  to  put  them 
in  the  way  of  catching  up  with  their  more  fortunate  brethren. 
Organized  labor  must  make  provision  for  them.  The  educated 
classes  must  see  to  it  that  their  schooling  opportunities  are 
increased.  But  most  of  all  must  opportunities  for  employment 
and  self-employment  be  opened  for  the  Negro. 

So  long  as  the  Negro  is  a  laborer,  union  labor  should  see 
that  he  is  organized.  So  long  as  he  is  a  citizen  and  a  voter, 
publicists  and  men  of  affairs  must  see  that  he  is  raised  to  the 
level  of  his  fellows.  The  strength  of  society  is  the  strength  of 
its  lowest  citizens.  A  state  may  continue  indifferent  to  the 
demands  of  a  large  class  of  its  people  and  appear  for  a  long 
time  to  suffer  no  harm;  but  ultimately  a  condition  will  arise 
in  which  the  failure  of  this  neglected  element  to  respond  to 
the  demands  made  upon  it  may  bring  ruin  upon  all. 


THE  MENACE  OF  RACE  HATRED  * 

There  are  strong  motives  for  misinforming  the  nation  about 
the  Negro,  for  creating  a  mythology  which  paints  him  as 
inferior,  diseased,  criminal,  slack,  shiftless,  irresponsible.  All 
the  force  of  public  sentiment  formed  upon,  and  fed  by,  this 
mythology  will  resist  his  endeavors  to  lift  himself  intellectually 
and  socially.  The  public  opinion  so  formed  will  tend  to  keep 
him  at  the  disadvantage  which  makes  him  a  subject  for  exploit- 

1  From  article  by  Herbert  J.  Seligmann.  Harper's  Monthly.  140:537-43. 
March,  1920. 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  87 

ation.  And  it  is  always  possible  to  discredit  his  efforts  by 
spreading  charges  that  he  is  preparing  to  revolt  under  the 
tutelage  of  the  I.  W.  W.  Such  reckless  and  harmful  accusations 
were  actually  made  by  Southern  members  of  the  House  of 
Representatives  and  were  also  attributed  to  officers  of  the  Depart 
ment  of  Justice.  The  largest  newspapers  in  the  land  published 
them  repeatedly,  maintaining  the  while  a  discreet  silence  as  to 
ground  for  the  agitator's  sowing. 

Those  who  assert  that  the  Negro  is  racially  inferior  do  so 
in  the  absence  of  substantiating  fact.  They,  and  all  the  forces 
which  create  an  unfavorable  public  opinion  through  the  press 
by  charging  the  Negro  with  crime  in  bold  head-lines,  are  doing 
the  greatest  possible  disservice  to  the  United  States.  It  is  the 
press  which  spreads  rumor  and  accusation  about  Negro  crim 
inality — such  as  the  entirely  mythical  "massacre  of  whites"  in 
Arkansas — which  no  correction  can  ever  set  right.  If  the  crea 
tion  of  an  alien,  race-conscious  group  within  the  United  States, 
resentful,  and  justly  so,  of  grave  injustice  and  discrimination,  is 
not  to  loom  as  a  threat  against  the  progress  and  continuance 
of  our  civilization,  there  must  be  some  honest  attempt  to 
overtake  with  fact  the  current  mythology  about  the  Negro  and 
about  race  relations. 

Basic  problems  of  the  relations  of  races  must  be  attacked 
in  this  country.  It  is  a  question  if  the  antagonism  between  men, 
which  springs  from  superficial  differences  like  skin  coloration, 
is  not  too  strong  to  make  it  possible  for  such  men  ever  to  live 
harmoniously  together.  Precisely  what  are  the  effects  of  race 
mixture  is  another  question  almost  unexplored  except  for  the 
vociferous  doctrinaire  who  rushes  in  where  the  scientist  has 
not  yet  trodden.  These  questions  are  not  now  in  the  way  of 
being  attempted.  To  the  extent  that  the  Negro  is  bandied  be 
tween  his  defamers  and  his  few  impassioned  protagonists  public 
discussion  becomes  impossible.  Race  problems  should  be  the 
subject  of  study  to  determine  what  are  the  possibilities  of  co 
operation  and  living  together  in  one  community  remain  in  the 
fog  of  passion,  where  the  person  of  ulterior  motives  uses  them 
for  his  own,  generally  anti-social,  purposes.  For  the  present 
the  Negro  is  in  the  position  of  the  most  exploited  class  in 
America.  Not  only  is  he  in  many  places  denied  education,  the 
vote,  assertion  of  his  common  humanity  and  manhood,  but  he  is 
held  in  subjection  by  social  organization  which  makes  that 


88  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

procedure  a  fundamental  dogma  of  its  Kultur.  Intelligent  minds 
in  the  South  oppose  the  cast-iron  mold  into  which  public  opinion 
is  forced,  the  ostracism  and  intimidation  of  the  man  who  dares 
to  speak  and  act  for  the  real  betterment  of  the  Negro.  But 
those  voices  are  few  and  discussion  must  therefore  come  from 
the  North.  From  the  North  the  approach  must  necessarily  be 
less  sympathetic  with  the  Southern  white  man's  difficulties  than 
if  free  discussion  were  tolerated  in  the  South. 

Meanwhile,  if  the  Negro  is  in  bonds  that  must  eventually 
make  him  attempt  to  destroy  the  society  that  forges  them,  the 
nation  is  equally  in  bonds.  Its  mind  is  restricted  because  a 
white  man  from  the  North  cannot  speak  his  mind  to  a  white 
man  from  the  South.  Civilizations  before  those  of  this  age 
have  crumbled  because  the  strains  within  them  have  proven  too 
great  for  their  cohesive  forces.  To  add  the  strain  of  avoidable 
hatreds  to  the  dangerous  impulses  with  which  modern  society 
must  contend  is  to  threaten  disintegration.  As  a  matter  of 
self-protection,  then,  and  of  protection  for  some  sort  of  society 
and  political  organization,  Americans  must  take  the  first  steps 
toward  dealing  in  an  orderly  way  with  race  problems.  Those 
steps,  without  which  no  order  or  peace  will  ever  be  possible,  are, 
first,  to  ascertain  the  facts;  second,  to  make  them  available  to 
the  citizens  of  the  country.  That  is  a  problem  for  scientists, 
protected  by  tolerance.  Americans  have  made  and  connived  at 
a  mythology  about  the  Negro  which  not  only  cloaks  excesses 
and  brutalities  that  parallel  the  worst  horrors  in  history  and 
debase  their  nation  before  the  world;  but  they  are  adding 
to  the  forces  of  destruction  within  their  nation  and  within 
themselves — forces  which  will  some  day  claim  an  exorbitant 
price. 

SOCIAL  COST  OF  SOUTHERN  RACE 
PREJUDICE  * 

In  the  end  the  solution  of  the  southern  race  problem  will 
come  chiefly  through  education;  but  it  will  come  primarily 
through  the  education  of  the  white  race.  This  may  seem  a  hard 
saying;  yet  it  is  the  conclusion  reached  after  a  conscientious 
study  of  the  culture-standards  of  the  white  people  of  the  Old 

1  From  article  by  George  Elliott  Howard,  University  of  Nebraska. 
American  Journal  of  Sociology.  22:577-93.  March  1917. 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  89 

South  as  tested  by  the  criteria  of  world-culture.    It  is  of  course  '\ 
essential  that  the  Negro  be  efficiently  educated ;   that  he  have  j 
and  use  the  best  means  for  the  training  of  his  hand  and  mind,  j 
He  must  have   free   opportunity  to   claim   a   full   share  in  the  | 
spiritual  and  material  heritage  of  the  past.     Only  in  that  way 
can  arise  the  new  cravings,  the  new  wants  and  ideals,   which 
spell  advancing  civilization.    At  the  best  the  raising  of  a  people's 
ideals  is  a   slow  process;   but  what  if  through  ignorance   and 
mob-mind  the  dominant  race  erect  a  formidable  barrier  against 
the  ascent  of  the  race  lower  down  on  the  culture  ladder?     The 
white  people  of  the  South  hold  the  point  of  vantage,  and  they 
must   therefore    bear   the   higher    responsibility.      They    possess 
the    superior    intelligence    and   the    greater   wealth   which   their 
vastly   larger   opportunity   has   yielded.     They   should    be    wise 
leaders  in  the  mighty  task  of  race-adjustment.     That  they  have 
thus  far  decidedly  failed  in  the  function  of  wise  leadership  is 
due  to  their  retarded  culture.     Blind  devotion  to  the  dogma  of 
the  natural  inferiority  of  the  black  race  has  cost  the  white  race 
dearly.     Perforce  it  has  thus  become  a  laggard  in  moral,  eco 
nomic,  social  and  scientific  progress. 

That  result  was  inevitable  under  the  condition  just  mentioned. 
Southern  writers,  with  curious  persistence,  continue  to  exalt  the 
quality  of  the  culture-standard  of  the  good  old  slavery  days. 
"The  finest  civilization,  Sir,  that  the  world  has  ever  seen !" 
Who  has  not  heard  it?  This  is  a  grave  mistake.  Relatively,  a 
slaveridden  society  cannot  attain  the  finest  civilization.  The 
terms  cancel  each  other.  Its  social  ideals  and  customs  are 
necessarily  backward;  and  how  can  a  noble  literature  arise  in  a 
community  when  all  that  is  finest  in  the  literature  of  the  outside 
world  is  a  reproach  to  its  basic  morals?  In  fact,  for  nearly  a 
hundred  years  the  intellectual  energy  of  the  South  has  been 
absorbed  in  the  defense  or  protection  of  its  cherished  race- 
dogma;  and  the  resultant  sterility  of  thought  in  other  directions 
has  not  yet  been  entirely  remedied. 

The  writer's  views  have  been  molded  chiefly  by  his  experi 
ences  in  five  states  of  the  South.  One  cannot  dwell  long  in 
such  centers  as  New  Orleans,  Savannah,  or  Charleston  without 
becoming  aware  of  the  singular  obsession  of  southern  thought. 
One's  sympathy  is  quickened  by  the  near  view  of  the  hard  lot 
of  the  whites  resulting  from  the  catastrophe  of  the  Civil  War. 
Estates  ravaged,  fortunes  ruined,  pitiful  makeshifts  of  gentle 


90  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

men  and  women  to  gain  the  daily  bread !  The  situation  is  often 
pathetic.  Far  more  pathetic,  even  tragic,  because  of  its  evil 
consequences,  is  the  incessant  harking  back  to  the  injustice  and 
suffering  caused  by  the  northern  invasion  and  conquest.  These 
grievances  are  almost  sure  to  be  the  burden  of  every  conversation. 
Public  discussion  and  even  books  of  literary  worth,  such  as  those 
of  Thomas  Nelson  Page,  are  pervaded  by  the  sad  lament  or 
the  indignant  protest.  With  almost  childish  helplessness  and 
inconsequence  the  "carpetbagger"  and  the  "scalawag"  are  raised 
as  a  shield  whenever  the  failures  of  the  present,  whether  eco 
nomic,  social  or  ethical,  are  alluded  to.  In  fact,  the  South  is 
facing  the  past.  While  it  is  looking  backward  the  possibilities 
of  the  future  are  not  perceived.  While  it  is  fighting  over  again 
the  battles  of  the  Civil  War  the  many-sided  fight  for  social 
regeneration  is  feeble  or  misdirected. 

The  majority  of  the  leaders  of  white  society  in  the  South 
are  attempting  the  hard  feat  of  advancing  backward  while  heart 
and  mind  are  turned  toward  the  dead  issues  of  the  past.  With 
almost  religious  fervor  they  persist  in  reopening  the  closed 
chapter.  Perfectly  natural,  of  course.  Possibly  any  other  people 
under  similar  conditions  might  yield  to  the  same  weakness. 
That  is  not  the  important  lesson  which  the  situation  teaches. 
Seeing  that  it  is  a  weakness,  however  human,  a  weakness  which 
is  hindering  the  progress  of  the  South,  why  not  make  a  heroic 
effort  to  overcome  it  by  facing  the  other  way?  At  least,  why 
not  join  the  group  of  new  statesmen  who,  in  opposition  both, 
to  the  old  aristocracy  and  to  the  new  democracy  led  by  Hoke 
Smith,  Tillman,  and  Vardaman,  are  earnestly  striving  to  do 
this  very  thing  through  exercising  the  fatal  obsession? 

Such  a  revolution  must  be  preceded  by  a  sounder  education 
of  the  whites.  In  reality  southern  thought  is  vitiated  by  a 
strangely  perverted  psychology.  Straight  thinking  is  the  essential 
condition  of  straight  acting. 

Nevertheless,  the  white  southerner  is  cocksure  that  the  Negro 
is  a  lower  order  of  creation.  However  else  they  may  differ  in 
opinion,  all  parties  and  sects,  from  Virginia  to  Florida  and 
from  Georgia  to  Louisiana,  are  agreed  that  God  made  the  black 
race  of  poorer  clay.  True,  in  the  last  quinquennium  there  have 
appeared  a  small  number  of  southern  men  and  women  with 
.trained  minds  who  are  releasing  themselves  from  the  iron  grip 
of  this  paralyzing  sectional  tradition.  A  literature  revealing  the 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  91 

world-standard  of  scientific  thought  is  slowly  arising.  Under 
leadership  of  educational  statesmen,  such  as  those  constituting 
the  "University  Commission  on  Race  Questions,"  the  emancipa 
tion  of  the  whites  from  their  mental  bondage  may  sometime 
take  place.  As  yet  the  swag  of  tradition  is  practically  unbroken. 
The  writers  that  are  molding  public  opinion  in  the  South  seem 
to  be  untouched  by  modern  research  in  ethnology,  anthropology 
and  race-psychology.  In  this  respect  the  polished  Thomas  Nel 
son  Page  is  at  one  with  the  violent  Shufeldt,  the  cruel  and 
reckless  Dixon,  the  bold  and  unflinching  Tillman  or  Vardaman. 
In  concluding  his  study  of  the  Negro;  The  Southerner's 
Problem — a  book  whose  deft  but  superficial  arguments  are 
shaping  the  stock  phrases  of  southern  conversation — he  affirms 
as  the  first  principle  in  the  solution  of  that  problem  "the  absolute 
and  unchangeable  superiority  of  the  white  race — a  superiority 
.  .  .  not  due  to  any  mere  adventitious  circumstances,  such  as 
superior  educational  and  other  advantages  during  some  centuries, 
but  an  inherent  and  essential  superiority,  based  on  superior 
intellect,  virtue  and  constancy."  He  does  not  "believe  that  the 
Negro  is  the  equal  of  the  white,  or  ever  could  be  the  equal"; 
for,  as  he  boldly  asserts,  "race-superiority  is  founded  on  courage 
(or,  perhaps,  'constancy'  is  the  better  word),  intellect,  and  the 
domestic  virtues,  and  in  these  the  white  is  the  superior  of 
every  race." 

Here  we  have  an  authoritative  expression  of  the  race-cult  of 
the  southern  white  caste.  Yet  if  one  would  but  lift  his  gaze 
above  Mason  and  Dixon's  line  he  might  find  some  curious  facts 
hard  to  reconcile  with  his  belief.  Was  not  the  French  feudal 
lord  as  firmly  convinced  of  his  "absolute  and  unchangeable" 
superiority  to  the  white  hind  that  served  and  fed  him?  Does 
not  the  haughty  Russ  contemn,  hate  and  persecute  the  Jew, 
once  the  chosen  of  the  Lord?  In  solving  his  race  problem  does 
not  the  landowning  descendant  of  the  old  feudal  baron  in 
Sicily  insist  on  the  same  basic  principle  of  his  heaven-born 
superiority  to  the  starving  peasants  whom  he  despises  and 
pitilessly  exploits,  although  they  may  be  as  white  as  himself? 
Is  not  the  proud  Magyar  of  Hungary  just  as  cocksure  as  is  his 
brother  in  Virginia  that  the  solution  of  his  race  problem  depends 
on  holding  sacred  the  principle  of  his  "absolute  and  unchange 
able"  superiority  to  the  Croatian,  the  Slovak,  even  the  Rumanian, 
although  Kossuth  was  a  Slovak  and  the  Rumanian  in  large  part 


92  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

derives  his  blood  and  his  speech  from  the  old  Roman  masters 
of  the  world!  This  is  the  so-called  "state-idea"  upon  which 
the  dominant  Magyar  aristocrat  stakes  his  future  social  welfare. 
To  him  the  other  peoples  of  Hungary  are  "inferior"  and  not 
competent  to  govern  themselves.  According  to  one  of  his 
sayings,  "a  Slovak  is  not  a  human  being" — a  "notion,"  remarks 
Booker  T.  Washington,  "that  seems  to  spring  up  quite  naturally 
in  the  mind  of  any  race  which  has  accustomed  itself  to  the 
slavery  and  oppression  of  another  race." 

So  far  from  its  being  the  essential  factor  in  the  solution 
of  the  southerner's  problem,  the  dogma  of  race-inferiority  is 
proving  an  almost  insuperable  barrier  to  its  right  settlement. 
If  the  criteria  of  world-culture  and  world-experience  may  be 
trusted  for  guidance,  the  first  principle  of  race-adjustment  is 
not  a  fixed  formula  of  relative  race-values.  Rather  it  is  such 
an  organization  of  the  community  life  as  shall  develop  all  the 
faculties  of  the  composite  population  to  their  highest  point  of 
efficiency  and  permit  their  harmonious  employment  in  doing  the 
community's  share  of  the  world's  work. 


RELATION  OF  NEGROES  TO  THE  WHITES  * 

If  one  notices  carefully  one  will  see  that  between  these  two 
worlds,  despite  much  physical  contact  and  daily  intermingling, 
there  is  almost  no  community  of  intellectual  life  or  points  of 
transference  where  the  thoughts  and  feelings  of  one  race  can 
come  with  direct  contact  and  sympathy  with  the  thoughts  and 
feelings  of  the  other.  Before  and  directly  after  the  war  when 
all  the  best  of  the  Negroes  were  domestic  servants  in  the  best 
of  the  white  families,  there  were  bonds  of  intimacy,  affection, 
and  sometimes  blood  relationship  between  the  races.  They 
lived  in  the  same  home,  shared  in  the  family  life,  attended 
the  same  church  often  and  talked  and  conversed  with  each 
other.  But  the  increasing  civilization  of  the  Negro  since  has 
naturally  meant  the  development  of  higher  classes:  there  are 
increasing  numbers  of  ministers,  teachers,  physicians,  merchants, 
mechanics  and  independent  farmers,  who  by  nature  and  training 

1  From  article  by  Professor  W.  E.  Burghardt  DuBois,  Ph.D.,  Atlanta 
University.  Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  18:121-40.  July,  1901. 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  93 

are  the  aristocracy  and  leaders  of  the  blacks.  Between  them, 
however,  and  the  best  element  of  the  whites,  there  is  little,  or 
no  intellectual  commerce.  They  go  to  separate  churches,  they 
live  in  separate  sections,  they  are  strictly  separated  in  all  public 
gatherings,  they  travel  separately,  and  they  are  beginning  to 
read  different  papers  and  books.  To  most  libraries,  lectures, 
concerts  and  museums  Negroes  are  either  not  admitted  at  all 
or  on  terms  peculiarly  galling  to  the  pride  of  the  very  classes 
who  might  otherwise  be  attracted.  The  daily  paper  chronicles 
the  doings  of  the  black  world  from  afar  with  no  great  regard 
for  accuracy;  and  so  on  throughout  the  category  of  means  for 
intellectual  communication;  schools,  conferences,  efforts  for 
social  betterment  and  the  like,  it  is  usually  true  that  the  very 
representatives  of  the  two  races  who  for  mutual  benefit  and  the 
welfare  of  the  land  ought  to  be  in  complete  understanding  and 
sympathy  are  so  far  strangers  that  one  side  thinks  all  whites 
are  narrow  and  prejudiced  and  the  other  thinks  educated  Negroes 
dangerous  and  insolent.  Moreover,  in  a  land  where  the  tyranny 
of  public  opinion  and  the  intolerence  of  criticism  is  for  obvious 
historical  reasons  so  strong  as  in  the  South,  such  a  situation  is 
extremely  difficult  to  correct.  The  white  man  as  well  as  the 
Negro  is  bound  and  tied  by  the  color  line  and  many  a  scheme 
of  friendliness  and  philanthropy,  of  broad-minded  sympathy, 
and  generous  fellowship  between  the  two  has  dropped  still-born  - 
because  some  busybody  has  forced  the  color  question  to  the  ^ 
front  and  brought  the  tremendous  force  of  unwritten  law 
against  the  innovators. 

It  is  hardly  necessary  tor  me  to  add  to  this  very  much  in 
regard  to  the  social  contact  between  the  races.  Nothing  has  come 
to  replace  that  finer  sympathy  and  love  between  some  masters 
and  house  servants,  which  the  radical  and  more  uncompromising 
drawing  of  the  color  line  in  recent  years  has  caused  almost 
completely  to  disappear.  In  a  world  where  it  means  so  much 
to  take  a  man  by  the  hand  and  sit  beside  him;  to  look  frankly 
into  his  eyes  and  feel  his  heart  beating  with  red  blood — in  a 
world  where  a  social  cigar  or  a  cup  of  tea  together  means 
more  than  legislative  halls  and  magazine  articles  and  speeches, 
one  can  imagine  the  consequences  of  the  almost  utter  absence 
of  such  social  amenities  between  estranged  races,  whose  separa 
tion  extends  even  to  parks  and  street  cars. 

Here  there  can  be  none  of  that  social  going  down   to  the 


94  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

people;  the  opening  of  heart  and  hand  of  the  best  to  the  worst, 
in  generous  acknowledgment  of  a  common  humanity  and  a  com 
mon  destiny.  On  the  other  hand,  in  matters  of  simple  alms 
giving,  where  there  be  no  question  of  social  contact,  and  in 
the  succor  of  the  aged  and  sick,  the  South,  as  if  stirred  by  a 
feeling  of  its  unfortunate  limitations,  is  generous  to  a  fault. 
The  black  beggar  is  never  turned  away  without  a  good  deal 
more  than  a  crust,  and  a  call  for  help  for  the  unfortunate 
meets  quick  response.  I  remember,  one  cold  winter,  in  Atlanta, 
when  I  refrained  from  contributing  to  a  public  relief  fund  lest 
Negroes  should  be  discriminated  against;  I  afterward  inquired 
of  a  friend :  "Were  any  black  people  receiving  aid  ?"  "Why," 
said  he,  "They  were  all  black." 

And  yet  this  does  not  touch  the  kernel  of  the  problem. 
Human  advancement  is  not  a  mere  question  of  almsgiving,  but 
rather  of  sympathy  and  cooperation  among  classes  who  would 
scorn  charity.  And  here  is  a  land  where,  in  the  higher  walks  of 
life,  in  all  the  higher  striving  for  the  good  and  noble  and  true, 
the  color  line  comes  to  separate  natural  friends  and  co-workers, 
while  at  the  bottom  of  the  social  group  in  the  saloon,  the 
gambling  hell  and  the  bawdy-house  the  same  line  wavers  and 
disappears. 


WHAT  DOES  THE  NEGRO  WANT  IN   OUR 
DEMOCRACY?1 

The  Negroes'  wants  in  our  democracy  are  simple  and 
fundamental. 

The  Negro  wants  a  democracy  not  a  "whiteocracy."  At 
present  the  United  States  of  America  is  more  a  "whiteocracy" 
than  a  democracy.  The  Negro  wants  the  sign  "For  Whites 
Only"  erased  from  the  banner  and  spirit  of  "our  democracy." 
In  other  words,  all  the  Negro  wants  is  democracy  in  the 
fundamental  sense  of  the  terms  as  explained  by  the  immortal 
Lincoln  in  "A  government  of  the  people  for  the  people  and  by 
the  people"  (not  white  people  only).  All  the  Negro  wants  in 
our  democracy,  is  for  the  spirit  of  the  Declaration  of  Inde 
pendence,  and  of  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States  to  be 

1  From  article  by  R.  R.  Wright,  Jr.,  Ph.D.,  Editor  "Christian  Re 
corder,"  President  Colored  Protective  Association,  Philadelphia.  National 
Conference  of  Social  Work.  1919:  539-45- 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  95 

applied  to  all  citizens  without  fear  or  favor.  That  is  not  done 
in  the  United  States  today  and  in  so  far  as  it  is  not,  we  fall  short 
of  anything  like  a  democracy  in  America.  Some  of  the  funda 
mental  things  which  "Our  Democracy"  should  hold  out  to  all 
able-bodied,  sound-minded  men  (and  women  also)  should  be  the 
right  to  help  make,  interpret  and  execute  the  laws  of  democracy, 
directly  or  through  the  representatives  they  elect;  that  is,  there 
should  be  political  equality.  There  should  be  the  equal  oppor 
tunity  of  all  children  to  become  educated  so  as  to  preserve  the 
democracy;  there  should  be  equitable  conditions  of  living,  includ 
ing  a  just  division  of  the  products  of  capital  and  labor  so  that 
there  may  be  progress  in  democracy.  But  these  things  are  so 
fundamental  and  elemental  that  the  whole  nation  accepts  them 
in  theory  at  least — but  for  whites  only. 

Let  me  be  more  specific.  What  does  the  Negro  want  in 
"Our  Democracy?"  I  answer  specifically  as  follows: 

1.  A  Chance  to  Vote. 

The  right  to  express  opinion  as  to  what  laws  shall  govern 
the  democracy  and  who  shall  execute  them  is  fundamental.  It 
is  notorious  that  where  nine-tenths  of  the  Negroes  live  they  are 
denied  the  right  to  vote,  and  in  defiance  of  the  spirit  of  our 
democracy.  When  the  draft  law  was  applied  in  the  South,  there 
was  no  distinction  on  account  of  color  (except  in  the  cases 
where  Negroes  were  sent  to  fill  the  quotas  for  which  whites 
should  have  been  sent).  Why  should  there  be  distinction  when 
it  comes  to  applying  the  election  law?  The  Negro  who  enrolled 
over  one  million  strong  and  went  to  France  over  two  hundred 
and  fifty  thousand  strong — the  Negro  who  presented  himself  in 
the  defense  of  his  country  in  larger  proportion  than  the  white 
man  of  the  South — wants  to  know  why  he  should  work  and 
fight  for  democracy  and  cannot  vote  for  it? 

And  this  Negro  will  not  be  satisfied  until  he  gets  a  fair 
chance  to  vote.  And  until  that  chance  is  given,  "Our  Democracy" 
is  merely  a  sham  and  a  farce.  For  the  Negro  is  the  acid  test 
of  our  democracy. 

2.  Justice  in  the  Courts. 

Next  to  the  right  to  vote,  "Our  Democracy"  should  give  to 
all  equal  justice  before  the  courts.  But  justice  in  a  large  part 
of  America  is  labeled  "for  whites  only."  In  cases  of  Negroes 


96  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

versus  Negroes,  there  is  fair  enough  justice;  when  a  Negro  is 
on  one  side  and  a  white  man  is  on  the  other,  it  is  rare  except 
in  trivial  cases,  for  the  Negro  to  get  justice.  Justice  is  usually 
on  the  side  of  the  voters — in  "Our  Democracy."  Practically 
every  intelligent  Negro  knows  (whether  he  thinks  it  politic  to 
state  it  publicly  or  not  is  another  matter)  that  the  courts  of  the 
South  make  mockery  of  justice,  so  far  as  the  protection  of  the 
rights  of  Negroes  against  the  aggression  of  lawless  whites  is 
concerned.  And  they  forfeit  millions  of  dollars  every  year 
because  they  know  the  courts  are  against  them.  ("What's  the 
use?"  is  the  question  of  despair  so  often  heard  when  a  Negro 
knows  he  is  right,  but  also  knows  the  courts  are  against  him.) 
So  the  Negro  wants  justice  in  the  courts. 

3.  Representation  on  Jury. 

The  right  of  trial  by  one's  peers  is  a  cornerstone  in  "Our 
Democracy,"  but  the  Negro  does  not  have  it.  Every  year  in 
"Our  Democracy"  hundreds  of  thousands  of  Negroes  are  tried, 
but  no  Negro  who  knows  Negro  life,  social  conditions,  Negro 
psychology,  etc.,  is  ever  called  to  sit  on  their  cases ;  but  men  who 
never  enter  a  Negro  home,  who  never  sit  in  a  Negro  church, 
who  have  nothing  but  contempt  for  Negroes  and  at  the  very 
best  are  ignorant  of  Negro  soul-life,  are  their  jurors.  Do  you 
wonder  that  so  many  are  condemned?  Do  you  wonder  that 
justice  is  so  often  miscarried?  Do  you  wonder  that  there  is 
growing  mistrust  of  the  courts?  Do  you  wonder  that  a  leading 
and  powerful  Negro  paper  refers  often  to  the  "Department 
of  Justice"  as  the  "Department  of  Injustice!"' 

So  the  Negro  wants  to  be  and  ought  to  be  on  the  juries  of 
"Our  Democracy"  to  preserve  justice. 

4.  Representation  in  the  Government. 

There  are  twelve  million  Negroes  in  this  country.  They  are 
about  10.5  per  cent  of  the  nation's  population.  In  the  states 
south  of  the  Ohio  river  there  are  nearly  ten  million  who  are 
about  30  per  cent  of  the  population.  Yet,  there  is  not  a 
single  Negro  in  Congress,  there  is  no  representation  in  any 
Southern  state  legislature  or  city  council.  In  sections  where  a 
large  majority  of  the  vote  is  Negro,  there  is  no  representation. 
This  not  only  hurts  the  Negro,  but  it  hurts  "Our  Democracy." 
No  government,  however  powerful  it  may  be,  can  endure  upon 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  97 

a  basis  of  insincerity,  subterfuge  and  fraud.  And  only  upon 
this  basis  is  the  Negro  kept  out  of  the  law-making  bodies  of 
the  South.  Understand,  the  Negro  does  not  want  to  "dominate," 
he  only  wants  to  be  heard.  If  he  is  to  obey  the  law,  he  wants 
the  right  to  express  himself  about  it.  And  not  only  in  the 
making  of  law,  but  in  the  administering  of  law,  the  Negro 
wants  a  share.  A  great  deal  of  friction  of  race  in  the  local 
community  is  due  to  the  fact  that  the  Negro  has  rro  chance  to 
help  administer  the  law — not  even  to  do  police  duty  in  Negro 
neighborhoods.  More  than  one  race  riot  would  have  been 
averted  if  the  community  had  been  democratic  enough  to  give 
the  Negro  a  part  in  administering  the  law  instead  of  having 
people  do  that  duty  who  feel  they  should  cower  the  Negro.  So 
I  repeat,  the  Negro  wants  representation  in  the  legislative  and 
executive  branches  of  our  local,  state  and  national  governments, 
which  their  labor  and  their  valor  have  helped  to  create.  They 
want  it  for  themselves;  they  want  it  that  our  democracy,  as  a 
democracy,  shall  not  perish  from  the  earth. 

5.  Better  Living  Conditions. 

In  every  community  in  the  South,  notwithstanding  Negroes 
pay  comparatively  higher  rents  than  whites,  and  notwithstanding 
their  property  is  often  assessed  higher  in  proportion  than  the 
whites,  they  are  shamefully  discriminated  against  in  the  sharing 
of  public  utilities.  They  are  forced  to  live  upon  the  undrained 
and  unpaved  and  unlighted  streets.  They  rarely  have  garbage 
collection.  It  is  impossible  to  put  sanitary  toilets,  bath  tubs 
and  other  improvements  their  taxes  pay  for  in  their  homes. 
They  pay  higher  insurance  because  the  city  will  not  give  them 
water  and  fire  protection.  I  know  the  terrible  strain  many 
Southern  communities  are  under,  but  that  strain  is  no  excuse  for 
such  unfairness  which  amounts  to  even  robbery  in  "Our 
Democracy."  Of  course,  if  the  Negro  had  a  ballot,  he  could  not 
be  robbed  of  his  proportion  of  city  improvements  as  he  now  is. 
But  when  the  fundamental  right  to  vote  is  denied  in  "Our 
Democracy"  you  may  expect  any  other  injustice. 

6.  Fairer  Wages. 

In  a  democracy  there  should  be  an  equitable  distribution  of 
the  combined  products  of  labor  and  capital.  To  the  laborer  this 
is  usually  wages.  The  Negro  does  not  get  fair  wages.  He 


98  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

pays  more  for  rent,  more  for  food,  and  more  for  clothes, 
comparatively,  than  the  white  man,  but  as  in  the  case  of  the 
white  woman,  as  compared  with  the  white  man,  the  Negro  does 
not  get  for  the  same  work  the  same  wages  that  the  whites  get. 

7.  Better  Educational  Advantages. 

Wherever  separate  schools  exist,  they  exist  to  the  detriment 
of  the  Negroes — in  the  length  of  term,  equipment,  preparation 
and  pay  of  teachers.  Notwithstanding  the  Negroes  are  largely 
engaged  in  agriculture,  and  agriculture  is  one  of  the  chief 
supports,  states  like  Mississippi,  Georgia,  South  Carolina,  Ala 
bama,  Arkansas  and  others  of  the  South  make  almost  no 
provision  for  the  training  of  Negroes  as  compared  with  whites. 
Not  only  do  they  neglect  to  do  their  duty  from  the  funds  of 
their  own  treasury,  some  of  them  actually  steal  from  the  Negro 
the  share  which  the  government  appropriates  for  education. 

In  "Our  Democracy"  there  is  not  a  single  state  which  has  a 
separate  system  of  schools  which  does  anything  like  half-way 
justice  (not  ideal  justice,  but  in  comparison  with  what  is  done 
for  other  children)  to  Negro  education.  The  foreigner  who 
has  never  done  a  thing  for  the  country  gets  for  his  children 
opportunities  for  education  which  the  Negro  whose  ancestors 
have  given  ten  generations  to  help  the  country  is  denied.  Think 
of  it !  For  ten  millions  of  Negroes  there  is  not  a  single  full- 
fledged  college  or  technical  school  of  a  higher  order,  supported 
by  public  funds,  in  the  whole  Southland,  and  in  all  of  these 
states  Negroes  are  denied  entrance  into  those  technical  schools 
which  the  states  support.  Think  of  it;  there  are  not  ten  high 
schools  of  equal  grade  with  the  whites  of  the  Southern  states, 
and  one  million  five  hundred  thousand  Negro  children  are  out 
of  school  today  in  "Our  Democracy."  The  Negro  wants  a 
chance  to  educate  his  children. 

8.  Protection  of  Colored  Women. 

The  Negro  wants  his  women  protected.  If  a  Negro  commits 
rape  upon  a  white  woman,  he  is  lynched,  if  a  mob  can  get  him. 
"Our  Democracy"  has  a  just  horror  of  the  rape  of  white 
women,  and  some  have  gone  so  far  as  to  justify  lynching  for 
that  cause.  But  the  most  prevalent  form  of  rape  in  this  country 
is  the  rape  of  Negro  women  by  white  men — but  as  yet  the 
conscience  of  "Our  Democracy"  is  asleep  to  the  rape  of  Negro 


THE   NEGRO   PROBLEM  99 

women;  one  rarely  ever  hears  of  a  white  man  being  brought  to 
trial  for  that  crime. 

The  Negro  wants  fornication  and  bastardy  laws  which  will 
make  white  men  support  their  bastard  children  and  will  give 
a  colored  woman  who  is  betrayed  by  a  white  man  some  standing 
in  court.  Negroes  object  to  anti-intermarriage  laws,  not  because 
they  want  to  marry  white  women,  but  because  they  know  such 
laws  are  made  purely  for  the  degradation  of  Negro  women  and 
protect  white  men  in  their  attacks  upon  our  womanhood.  I 
believe  every  Negro  of  intelligence  would  welcome  an  anti- 
miscegination  law,  which  would  keep  down  inter-breeding.  Be 
cause  Negroes  have  no  vote,  the  white  voters  permit  whore 
houses  and  low  dives  to  thrive  in  Negro  neighborhoods.  In 
deed,  the  city  council  has  designated  such  a  district  where  a 
Negro  school  was.  In  many  cities  the  brothels  for  white  men 
are  in  Negro  neighborhoods— not  by  invitation,  however,  but 
because  a  voteless  people  cannot  protect  themselves,  and  a 
democracy  which  disfranchises  any  part  of  its  citizens  makes 
them  the  logical  prey  of  the  vicious  ones  of  the  enfranchised 
group. 

9.  Abolition  of  Lynching. 

There  have  been  over  3,500  in  our  country;  many  of  them 
have  been  for  causes  more  or  less  trivial ;  such  as  "talking  back 
to  a  white  person,"  disputing  about  money,  theft,  resisting  arrest, 
etc.,  for  which  the  offender  would  have  received  a  light  sentence 
if  convicted  in  a  court  by  trial.  But  a  democracy  which 
disfranchises  a  part  of  its  citizens  may  expect  lynching.  Sheriffs 
are  slow  to  protect  those  who  do  not  vote  for  them. 

10.  Abolition  of  Special  Laws. 

Practically  all  of  the  older  states,  at  one  time,  saw  fit  to 
have  special  laws  for  the  control  of  Negroes.  These  laws  existed 
in  Ohio,  New  York  and  Pennsylvania,  as  well  as  Georgia,  South 
Carolina  and  Virginia.  But  fortunately,  most  of  them  have 
been  abolished.  The  Negro  wants  them  all  abolished,  for  they 
do  not  help  the  Negro  and  only  harm  and  degrade  the  white 
man.  They  are  instruments  to  legalize  community  robbery  and 
oppression.  At  present  the  separate  car  law  is  not  an  instrument 
of  justice,  but  a  mere  subterfuge  to  tax  Negroes  for^comforts 
for  whites.  Negroes  pay  the  same  as  whites  for  their  tickets, 


TOO  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

but  do  not  get  the  same  accommodation  as  whites,  which  is 
mere  robbery.  This  injustice  the  Negro  wants  abolished. 

11.  The  Use  of  Public  Privileges  for  Which  They  Pay. 
Negroes  pay  taxes,  often  special  assessments  for  public  parks, 

public  libraries,  public  schools  and  other  public  conveniences, 
even  public  toilets,  from  which  they  are  excluded  and  no 
provision  is  made  for  them.  This  is  not  the  ideal  of  democracy 
and  yet  there  are  millions  of  people  today  who  not  only  do  not 
contend  against  it  but  think  it  right. 

12.  Negroes   Want   the   Fruits   of   Victory   as    Well   as   the 
-Burdens  of  War. 

On  every  hand  we  have  heard  the  Negro  applauded  for  his 
loyalty  in  the  war.  Only  a  few  days  ago  a  governor  of  a 
great  Southern  state  complimented  a  Negro  audience  on  its 
loyalty.  Said  he :  "You  did  everything  we  asked ;  you  were  every 
bit  as  loyal  as  the  white  people.  You  showed  you  were  Amer 
ican  to  the  core.  When  we  called  for  the  boys  to  go  to  the  war, 
you  answered  with  twenty-six  thousand;  when  we  called  for  the 
Liberty  Loan,  you  gave  your  hundreds  of  thousands.  You  gave 
to  the  Red  Cross,  for  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.,  for  the  Armenian  and 
Syrian  Christians.  You  bought  thrift  stamps  and  war  savings 
certificates ;  your  women  organized ;  your  churches  rallied,  and  at 
home  you  held  your  own  as  workers  in  the  home  trenches.  I 
say  we  are  proud  of  your  patriotism.  And  of  the  two  hundred 
fifty  boys  of  this  state  who  gave  their  lives  for  our  nation,  in 
camp  or  hospital  or  transport  or  in  trenches,  of  these  two  hundred 
fifty  brave  boys  whom  this  state  and  nation  must  forever  honor, 
you,  my  splendid  colored  friends,  gave  more  than  one  hundred 
of  your  boys,  your  sons,  your  fathers  and  brothers  to  pay  the 
last  and  greatest  price  of  liberty." 

I  asked  myself  as  I  heard  this  eloquent  governor:  "Is  this 
sacrifice  not  worth  the  ballot  and  the  privilege  of  a  citizen?" 
Now  that  the  Negro  has  helped  win  the  war  he  wants  some  of 
its  fruits. 

13.  Negroes  Want  the  Church  to  be  Democratic;  Particularly 
Do  They   Want  the  Christianity  of  Jesus  as  Applied  to  Social 
Questions. 

Even  though  the  mass  of  Negroes  are  untrained  in  social 
science  or  theology,  next  to  the  denial  of  the  right  to  vote,  the 


THE   NEGRO  -PROBLEM7  101 

greatest  resentment  is  felt  toward  the  organized  church,  which 
is  regarded  as  either  weak  or  hypocritical  in  its  attitude  towards 
the  social  welfare  of  the  Negroes.  Somehow,  the  Negro  feels 
that  the  church  ought  to  be  concerned  with  the  things  of  earth 
such  as  legal  justice,  protection  of  womanhood,  education  and 
conservation  of  child  life,  prevention  of  crime  and  disease,  train 
ing  and  adequate  returns  for  labor,  and  equal  ballot,  fair  admin 
istration  of  the  law  as  applied  to  the  Negro.  But  the  church 
seems  to  have  assumed  the  position  of  the  priest  and  the  Levite 
in  its  relation  to  the  Negro  who  has  fallen  among  political  and 
economic  thesans  in  "Our  Democracy." 

14.  The  Negro  Wants  Recognition  of  Real  Negro  Leadership. 

In  our  democracy  we  shall  not  be  safe  if  employers  or  those 
whom  employers  pay  are  the  only  spokesmen  for  labor;  or  if 
men  or  those  whom  men  pay  represent  women;  if  English  or 
those  dependent  upon  the  philanthropy  or  the  politics  of  the 
English,  represent  the  Irish.  So  if  white  men  or  those  dependent 
upon  the  philanthropy  of  white  men  are  to  be  the  sole  spokes 
men  to  the  white  world  for  the  Negro  race,  the  Negro  will  not 
be  fairly  represented  and  will  distrust  our  democracy.  The 
democracy  needs  the  Negro  as  represented  by  the  Negro  leader 
ship.  The  Negro  churches,  newspapers,  business  and  fraternal 
organizations  are  developing  Negro  leaders.  The  day  of  the 
hand-picked  leaders  is  over.  The  man  or  the  woman  who  sits  at 
the  council  table  for  the  Negro,  who  is  to  represent  the  Negro 
point  of  view,  must  be  a  genuine  Negro  leader,  who  is  put  up  by 
Negroes,  supported  by  Negroes  and  may  be  taken  down  by 
Negroes  when  he  fails  to  represent  them.  Our  real  leaders  are 
not  those  gentlemen  whose  hands  are  held  out  for  the  alms  of 
white  people  and  who  live  in  their  "philanthropy." 

15.  Negroes    Want    Democracy    and    Mutual    Self-Respect 
Among  the  Races  Which  Make  Up  Our  Great  Country. 

Negroes  do  not  want  to  dominate  anybody;  they  merely 
want  representation;  they  do  not  want  to  hate  the  white  people. 
They  do  not  want  bolshevism.  They  do  not  want  anarchy.  They 
want  to  be  American  citizens  in  the  greatest  democracy  of  the 
world.  They  are  not  aliens— they  were  born  here.  Do  you 
think  the  Negro  wants  too  much? 


102  SELECTED  ARTICLES 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  * 

There  are  friends  of  the  South  who,  having  studied  the 
evolution  of  the  new  Negro,  harbor  serious  misgivings.  No 
mere  fanciful  bugaboo  is  the  new  Negro.  He  exists.  More 
than  once  I  have  met  him.  He  differs  radically  from  the 
timorous,  docile  Negro  of  the  past.  Said  a  new  Negro,  "Cap'n, 
you  mark  my  words;  the  next  time  white  folks  pick  on  colored 
folks,  something's  going  to  drop— dead  white  folks."  Within  a 
week  came  race  riots  in  Chicago,  where  Negroes  fought  back  with 
surprising  audacity. 

Another  new  Negro,  from  overseas  said,  "We  were  the  first 
American  regiment  on  the  Rhine — Colonel  Hayward's,  the  Fight 
ing  Fifteenth;  we  fought  for  democracy,  and  we're  going  to 
keep  on  fighting  for  democracy  till  we  get  our  rights  here  at 
home.  The  black  worm  has  turned." 

I  said,  "There  is  a  high  mortality  among  turning  worms. 
We've  got  you  people  eight  to  one." 

He  answered,  "Don't  I  know  it?  Thousands  of  us  must 
die ;  but  we'll  die  fighting.  Mow  us  down — slaughter  us !  It's 
better  than  this." 

I  remembered  seeing  a  Negro  magazine  shortly  after  the 
Chicago  riots;  a  war-goddess  on  its  cover  brandished  aloft 
her  sword.  "They  who  would  be  free,"  ran  the  legend,  "must 
themselves  strike  the  blow."  I  remembered  a  telegram  from 
a  Negro  editor,  "Henceforward,  an  eye  for  an  eye,  a  tooth 
for  a  tooth,  a  life  for  a  life."  Here,  in  this  colored  veteran, 
was  the  same  spirit — the  spirit,  that  is,  of  the  new  Negro. 
Hit,  he  hits  back.  In  a  succession  of  race  riots,  he  has  proved 
it.  "When  they  taught  the  colored  boys  to  fight,"  says  a  Negro 
paper,  "they  started  something  they  won't  be  able  to  stop." 

This  is  apparently  no  transient  mood.  The  evolution  of  the 
new  Negro  has  been  in  progress  since  1916,  when  southern 
Negroes  began  to  move  North.  That  huge,  leaderless  exodus — 
a  million  strong,  according  to  Herbert  J.  Seligmann,  author 
of  "The  Negro  Faces  America"— stronger  by  far,  according-  to 
some  authorities— meant  that  for  the  first  time  in  history  the 
Negro  had  taken  his  affairs  into  his  own  hands.  Until  then, 

1From  article  by  Rollin  Lynde  Hartt.  Independent.  105:59-60. 
January  15,  1921. 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  103 

things  had- been  done  to  the  Negro,  with  the  Negro,  and  for 
the  Negro,  but  never  by  the  Negro.  At  last,  he  showed  initiative 
and  self-reliance.  Despite  the  lure  of  big  wages  "up  North,"  it 
required  no  little  courage.  If  the  vanguard  was  exploited,  the 
exploitation  continued  and  still  continues.  In  an  article  on 
"The  High  Cost  of  Being  a  Negro,"  the  Chicago  Whip  declares, 
"In  Chicago,  Kansas  City,  New  York  and  Detroit,  where  Negroes 
are  working,  they  have  to  pay  twice  the  rent,  and  in  neighborhood 
clothing  and  grocery  stores  recent  investigations  show  that  for 
the  same  goods  the  Negro  has  to  pay  a  color  tax  sometimes 
as  high  as  50  per  cent.  Thus  the  net  earnings,  if  any  at  all, 
are  50  per  cent  less  than  those  of  the  white  workers."  Yet 
the  exodus  from  Dixie  goes  on.  Few — astonishingly  few — 
return. 

"The  exodus  is  a  great  mark  of  progress,"  thinks  Dr.  Hawk; 
"Negroes  are  saying,  'We  can  do  this  thing  ourselves.' "  They 
had  not  been  doing  it  long  when  a  new  and  still  more  tremendous 
influence  came  into  play.  America  declared  war.  Negroes  by 
scores  of  thousands  joined  the  colors.  Nor  was  that  all.  On 
the  fourteenth  of  March,  President  Wilson  "put  the  devil  into 
the  Negro's  head,"  as  a  southern  newspaper  phrases  it,  by 
receiving  a  deputation  of  colored  clergy  at  the  White  House 
and  making  a  speech  thus  reported  in  the  Negro  press  the 
country  over : 

I  have  always  known  that  the  negro  has  been  unjustly  and  unfairly 
dealt  with;  your  people  have  exhibited  a  degree  of  loyalty  and  patriotism 
that  should  command  the  admiration  of  the  whole  nation.  In  the  present 
conflict  your  race  has  rallied  to  the  nation's  call,  and  if  there  has  been 
any  evidence  of  slackerism  manifested  by  negroes,  the  same  has  not 
reached  Washington. 

Great  principles  of  righteousness  are  won  by  hard  fighting  and  they 
are  attained  by  slow  degrees.  With  thousands  of  your  sons  in  the  camps 
and  in  France,  out  of  this  conflict  you  must  expect  nothing  less  than  the 
enjoyment  of  full  citizenship  rights— the  same  as  are  enjoyed  by  every 
other  citizen. 

How — as  a  matter  of  precise,  historic  fact — did  the  Negro 
acquit  himself  in  France?  Accounts  by  white  men  vary. 
Accounts  by  black  men  don't.  Exclaims  a  Negro  paper,  "Are 
you  aware  that  a  Negro  was  the  first  American  to  receive  the 
Croix  de  Guerre  with  palm  and  gold  star?  That  three  Negro 
regiments  and  several  battalions  and  companies  were  cited  and 
had  their  flags  decorated  for  valorous  conduct?  That  Negroes 
placed  for  the  first  time  in  artillery  and  signal  corps  won  high 
distinction?  That  Negroes  in  the  early  part  of  the  war  held 


104  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

20  per  cent  of  all  territory  assigned  to  Americans?  That  the 
Negro  army  was  the  healthiest  on  record?  That  out  of  45,000 
Negroes  engaged  in  battle  only  nine  were  taken  prisoners? 
That  the  Negroes  established  a  record  for  continuous  service 
in  the  trenches — 191  days?"  "Under  similar  circumstances," 
comments  the  New  York  Crisis,  "we  would  fight  again.  But,  by 
the  God  of  Heaven,  we  are  cowards  and  jackasses  if,  now  that 
the  war  is  over,  we  do  not  marshal  every  ounce  of  our  brain 
and  brawn  to  fight  a  sterner,  longer,  more  unbending  battle 
against  the  forces  of  hell  in  our  own  land."  "Back  again,  to  be 
lynched,  bombed,  and  riot- frenzied  and  segregated !"  cries  the 
.  Chicago  Whip.  "The  black  man  fought  to  make  the  world  safe 
for  democracy;  he  now  demands  that  America  be  made  safe  for 
black  Americans." 

In  other  words,  the  Negro  thinks  as  in  identical  circum 
stances  a  Caucasian  would  think.  Having  learned  initiative, 
having  heard  from  his  President  the  promise  of  "freedom," 
and  having  served  his  country  on  the  battlefield,  he  is  determined 
henceforth  to  act  as  in  the  circumstances  a  Caucasian  would  act. 
For  once — to  that  extent — black  is  white. 

"You  have  now  with  you  a  new  Negro,"  declared  the  editor 
of  the  Oklahoma  City  Black  Dispatch  in  addressing  a  white 
audience.  "This  new  Negro,  who  stands  today  released  in 
spirit,  finds  himself  physically  bound  and  shackled  by  laws  and 
customs  that  were  made  for  slaves."  Is  he  then  seeking  "social 
equality?"  "What  we  want  is  social  justice,  none  of  my  race 
is  dreaming  of  'social  equality.'" 

Once  in  the  World,  Mr.  Dooley  could  remark  to  Mr. 
Hennessy,  "Th'  nayger  has  manny  fine  qualities — he  is  joyous, 
light-hearted,  and  aisily  lynched."  The  new  Negro  has  deter 
mined  to  change  all  that.  Says  the  Kansas  City  Call;  "The 
white  man  will  learn  in  time  that  he  has  in  this  new  type  of 
Negro  a  foeman  worthy  of  his  steel.  If  we  are  driven  to  defend 
our  lives,  our  homes,  our  rights,  let  us  do  it  man-fashion.  How 
better  can  we  die  than  in  defending  our  lives,  our  homes,  our 
rights  from  the  attacks  of  white  men  obsessed  with  the  idea 
that  this  world  was  made  for  Caesar  and  his  queens?" 

I  once  heard  Booker  Washington  say,  "The  Negro  can 
afford  to  be  wronged ;  the  white  man  can't  afford  to  wrong  him." 
Patience  was  the  watchword — then.  It  is  seldom  the  watchword 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  105 

now.     Entirely   typical   of   widespread    Negro    sentiment    today 
is  this  from  the  Crisis : 

"For  three  centuries  we  have  suffered  and  cowered.  No  race 
ever  gave  passive  resistance  and  submission  to  evil  longer,  more  • 
piteous  trial.  Today  we  raise  the  terrible  weapon  of  self-de 
fense.  When  the  murderer  comes,  he  shall  no  longer  strike  us 
in  the  back.  When  the  armed  lynchers  gather,  we  too  must 
gather  armed.  When  the  mob  moves,  we  propose  to  meet  it 
with  bricks  and  clubs  and  guns.  If  the  United  States  is  to  be 
a  land  of  law,  we  would  live  humbly  and  peaceably  in  it;  if  it 
is  to  be  a  land  of  mobs  and  lynchers,  we  might  as  well  die 
today  as  tomorrow." 

So,  likewise,  the  New  York  Age :  "Every  day  we  are  told  to 
keep  quiet.  Only  a  fool  will  keep  quiet  when  he  is  being  robbed 
of  his  birthright.  Only  a  coward  will  lie  down  and  whine 
under  the  lash  if  he  too  can  give  back  the  lash.  America  hates, 
lynches  and  enslaves  us,  not  because  we  are  black,  but  because 
we  are  weak.  A  strong,  united  Negro  race  will  not  be  mistreated. 
It  is  always  strength  over  weakness,  might  over  right."  Mean 
while  a  colored  preacher  writer  in  the  Cleveland  Gazette :  "Don't 
start  anything,  but  when  something  is  started  make  it  hot  for 
them  and  finish  it." 


RACE  RIOTS  AND   THEIR  REMEDY1 

/- 

The   Negro   officers   and   men   now   returning  have   but   one 

story  to  tell,  and  they  tell  it  with  bitterness  and  in  tears.  Yet 
there  is  no  redress,  there  is  nothing  that  the  Negro  can  do,  but 
wait.  He  dares  not — he  must  not  take  the  law  into  his  own 
hands.  That  is  anarchy  and  leads  to  riots  and  lawlessness. 
The  higher  and  better  classes  of  colored  people,  like  the  higher 
and  better  classes  of  white  people,  are  not  in  sympathy  with 
mob  law  or  anything  that  is  destructive  of  good  government. 

The  war  is  now  over,  the  Negro  soldier  has  returned.  Note 
his  treatment  on  the  railroads,  all  of  which  are  under  Govern 
ment  control.  Many  of  these  men  in  going  to  their  homes  with 
laurels  of  victory  won  in  their  country's  defense  are  not  permitted 

1  From  article  by  W.  S.  Scarborough,  D.D.,  President  of  Wilberforce 
University.  Independent.  99:223.  August  16,  1919. 


io6  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

to  ride  in  other  than  the  Jim-crow  cars.  Many  of  them  have 
been  assaulted  and  thrown  off  the  cars  by  Government  officials — 
notwithstanding  their  record  across  seas — simply  because  of  their 
color.  Many  of  them  have  not  only  suffered  in  this  way,  but 
have  met  death,  because  they  sought  better  treatment.  This 
is  a  terrible  chapter  in  our  American  life,  and  only  the  Negro's 
love  for  good  government  prevents  serious  trouble. 

The  Negro  is  law-abiding  and  only  occasionally  shows  a 
retaliatory  spirit.  Will  not  the  American  white  people  come 
halfway — put  aside  their  prejudices  and  play  fair  with  this 
people  that  has  done  so  much  to  help  win  this  war?  Negroes 
are  not  rioters,  but  can  be  made  so.  It  is  a  heavy  burden  they 
carry.  They  ask  no  favors,  but  simply  a  man's  chance  in  the 
race  of  life,  and  an  opportunity  to  develop  the  powers  that 
God  has  given  them. 


RACE  PROBLEM  * 

Is  it  not  incredible,  in  view  of  the  magnitude  and  threatening 
character  of  the  problem,  that  it  remains  practically  untouched 
from  an  administrative  point  of  view,  that  it  is  almost  wholly 
overlooked  by  our  governmental  agencies,  that  our  statesmen 
are  indifferent  to  it?  Even  President  Wilson,  with  his  keen 
constructive  mind,  his  readiness  to  tackle  every  other  problem 
and  to  offer  a  solution  for  it,  is  content  to  pass  this  by  when  he 
can,  or  if  he  cannot,  to  lose  his  temper  over  a  rudely  aggressive 
recital  of  the  race's  wrongs,  or  to  dismiss  the  question  with  a 
story  as  he  did  the  other  day  when  a  group  of  Southern 
investigators  called  upon  him.  If  it  is  the  despair  of  our 
statesmanship,  it  is  the  despair  of  neglect  and  of  cowardice. 
Republicans  and  Democrats  alike  shirk  the  issue,  partly  for  lack 
of  vision  or  a  constructive  programme,  but  always  in  dread  of  a 
prejudice  which  must  be  made  to  yield  before  the  majesty  of  the 
laws  of  the  land  and  o.f  justice  itself.  Serious  authors  follow 
suit  to  the  extent  of  treating  the  issue  from  every  point  of 
view  save  that  of  government ;  they  rarely  deal  with  it  as  a 
domestic  and  social  problem  for  which  remedies  must  as  cer 
tainly  be  found  as  for  those  concerning  labor  and  capital  or  any 

1  From  article  by  Oswald  Garrison  Villard.  Nation.  99:738-40.  Decem 
her  24,  1914. 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  107 

others  which  menace  the  peace  and  happiness  of  the  people  of 
the  United  States.  Instead  we  hear  solemnly  that  the  only 
way  out  is  to  govern  the  inferior  race  by  violence,  by  defiance 
of  law  and  order,  by  the  Negro's  exclusion  from  a  share  in 
government  as  from  its  benefits.  It  is  true  that  we  have  such 
helpful  and  valuable  studies  as  Albert  Bushnell  Hart's  "The 
Southern  South."  But  the  writer  has  yet  to  appear  who  can 
analyze  the  situation  with  that  firmness  of  grasp  which  is 
characteristic  of  Lord  Bryce's  treatment  of  most  of  our  difficult 
problems  and  at  the  same  time  throw  down  the  gauntlet  to  our 
dormant  statesmanship. 

Dormant  it  plainly  is,  for  Washington  is  content  either  to 
approach  the  subject  from  the  unblushing  standpoint  of  prejudice, 
as  illustrated  by  the  scarcely  checked  effort  to  segregate  the 
colored  employees  in  the  Federal  departments  and  by  the  familiar 
Congressional  diatribes  of  the  professional  negrophobes,  or  to 
ignore  it ;  while  our  Federal  courts  have  been  as  adept  in 
dodging  questions  involving  fundamental  civic  rights  as  our 
public  is  blind  to  the  flat  and  defiant  Southern  violation  of  the 
Constitution.  We  have  had  President's  commissions  to  deal 
with  the  rural-life  problem  and  farmers'  credits  and  banks. 
A  new  bureau  concerns  itself  exclusively  with  children;  and 
our  forests  have  their  especial  Federal  guardian.  But  there  is 
no  Government  agency  which  devotes  itself  to  studying  scien 
tifically  the  racial  problems  that  have  lately  driven  no  less  able 
a  foreign  observer  than  Sir  Sydney  Olivier,  for  five  years 
Governor  of  Jamaica,  and  all  his  life  close  to  the  Negro  problem, 
to  the  belief  that  this  country  is  again  headed  straight  for  civil 
war  unless  our  responsible  statesmen  turn  squarely  about  and 
move  in  the  contrary  direction  from  that  which  is  marked  for 
the  wayfarer  by  disfranchisement,  the  Jim  Crow  car,  and 
latterly  the  establishment  of  black  ghettos  in  our  Southern  cities. 

And  so  race  friction  grows  apace,  South  and  North;  in  the 
South  economic  pressure,  the  upward  strivings  of  blacks  and 
poor  whites,  the  machinations  of  the  pothouse  politicians  who 
misgovern  them  both;  the  shocking  failure  to  give  a  real  educa 
tion  to  the  children  of  the  South,  and  particularly  to  those  of  the 
freedmen;  the  constant  wedging  apart  of  the  races  in  their 
social  life  by  new  restrictive  legislation  planned,  passed,  and 
enforced  by  the  white  men  to  suit  their  will— these  developments 
are  full  of  menace,  since  they  are  conceived  by  passion  and 


io8  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

prejudice.  Only  in  some  of  the  Southern  colleges  is  there 
beginning  a  movement  to  find  a  way  out  of  the  terrible  morass 
of  hatred  and  injustice  into  which  both  races  are  sinking. 

In  the  North  the  influx  of  colored  multitudes  finds  us  less 
willing,  if  anything  to  give  a  square  deal  to  the  individual  than 
in  the  South ;  finds  our  labor  unions  bitterly  hostile ;  our  cities 
unready  to  take  them  in  hand,  to  render  them  useful  citizens, 
to  mould  them  to  their  commercial  needs,  we  shudder  at  their 
squalor  and  then  deny  them  the  means  of  livelihood  to  rise 
beyond  it;  we  too,  would  restrict  their  habitat  if  they  depress 
our  land  values  and  so  touch  our  pocket  nerve.  But  to  take 
them  up  as  a  burden  and  as  a  study,  whether  we  dread,  or  despise 
or  like  them — there  are  few  individuals  of  us,  indeed,  who  are 
ready  to  take  the  trouble,  our  invaded  municipalities  least  of  all. 


KUKLUX  KLAN   REVIVAL1 

The  Kuklux  Klan  crossed  Mason  and  Dixon's  line  in  the 
Winter  of  1920-21.  Revived  in  the  South  some  five  years  ago, 
this  secret,  oath-bound  organization  that  had  its  origin  in  the 
troublous  times  of  the  Reconstruction  period  following  the 
Civil  War  in  America,  began  during  the  Winter  just  past  to 
extend  its  activities  into  the  North  and  West,  with  the  avowed 
intention  of  uniting  native-born  white  Christians  for  concerted 
action  in  the  preservation  of  American  institutions  and  the 
supremacy  of  the  white  race. 

In  New  York  City  and  in  other  centres  even  further  distant 
from  the  region  in  which  the  original  Kuklux  Klan  was  active 
there  have  been  planted  nuclei  of  the  revived  organization, 
according  to  the  statements  of  its  officials.  How  many  such 
centres  have  been  established  in  the  North  and  West  and  the 
extent  of  the  membership  are  not  revealed.  As  in  the  original 
Kuklux  Klan,  members  are  known  only  to  each  other;  the 
general  public  is  permitted  to  know  only  certain  national  officers 
connected  with  the  organization. 

To  the  average  American  the  mention  of  the  name  suggests 
terrorism.  The  mental  picture  of  the  Kuklux,  to  those  to  whom 
the  words  conjure  up  any  mental  picture  at  all,  is  of  a  band 

1  From  article  by  Frank  Parker  Stockbridge.  Current  History  Maga 
zine.  New  York  Times.  14:19-25.  April  1921. 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  109 

of  white-robed,  hooded  riders,  appearing  mysteriously  out  of  the 
darkness  and  proceeding,  silently  and  with  complete  discipline, 
to  execute  some  extra  legal  mission  of  warning  or  of  private 
vengeance.  That,  at  least,  is  the  reaction  of  the  average  Northern 
white  man,  whose  knowledge  of  the  Kuklux  Klan  is  derived 
entirely  from  reading  or  the  "movies."  To  him  it  is  something 
like  the  vigilantes  of  early  California  days  or  the  "Night 
Riders"  of  the  Kentucky  tobacco  war  of  the  early  twentieth 
century;  the  words  carry  to  his  ears  an  unmistakable  flavor  of 
lynch  law,  and,  if  he  be  old  enough  to  have  read  the  writings 
of  Albion  W.  Tourgee  and  other  Northern  authors  who  wrote 
of  the  South  in  the  Reconstruction  period,  he  cannot  escape  the 
implication  of  lawless  oppression  of  the  Negro  by  the  white. 

To  the  Southern  white  man,  however,  the  name  of  this 
organization  brings  up  a  different  picture. 

"The  Kuklux  saved  the  South"  is  the  expression  in  which  he 
sums  up  in  a  phrase  a  point  of  view  which  has  grown  into  a 
fixed  tradition  in  the  States  of  the  former  Confederacy.  To 
the  average  Southern  white  man  of  today  the  name  of  the 
Kuklux  Klan  after  the  lapse  of  half  a  century,  typifies  all  that 
was  best  and  finest  in  the  chivalry  of  the  old  South.  It  conveys 
to  him  the  impression  of  valiant  men  resisting  tyranny,  of  the 
salvation  of  the  white  race  from  threatened  Negro  domination 
(with  all  that  that  implied  socially  as  well  as  politically),  and 
of  the  rescue  of  the  white  womanhood  of  the  South  from  a 
frightful  and  ever-present  peril. 

Formed  in  1865  at  Pulaski,  Tenn.  as  a  social  club  of  young 
white  men,  with  what  Dr.  Fleming  calls  "an  absurd  ritual  and 
a  strange  uniform,"  it  was  soon  discovered  by  the  members  that 
"the  fear  of  it  had  a  great  influence  over  the  lawless  but  super 
stitious  blacks."  In  the  difficult  situation  confronting  the  con 
quered  South,  it  was  inevitable  that  this  power  to  terrorize 
should  be  availed  of.  "Soon,"  says  Dr.  Fleming,  "the  club 
expanded  into  a  great  federation  of  regulars,  absorbing  numerous 
local  bodies  that  had  been  formed  in  the  absence  of  civil  law 
and  partaking  of  the  nature  of  the  old  English  neighborhood 
police  and  the  ante-bellum  slave  patrol." 

Among  the  conditions  and  causes  that  enabled  the  Kuklux 
Klan  to  develop  in  two  or  three  years  into  the  most  powerful 
instrument  of  regulation  in  the  whole  South,  Dr.  Fleming 
enumerates  these : 


i  io  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

"The  absense  of  stable  government  in  the  South  for  several 
years  after  the  Civil  War;  the  corrupt  and  tyrannical  rule  of 
the  alien,  renegade  and  Negro;  the  disfranchisement  of  whites; 
the  spread  of  ideas  of  social  and  political  equality  among  the 
Negroes ;  fear  of  Negro  insurrections ;  the  arming  of  the  Negro 
militia  and  the  disarming  of  whites ;  outrages  upon  white  women 
by  black  men ;  the  influence  of  Northern  adventurers  in  the 
Freedmen's  Bureau  and  the  Union  League  in  alienating  the 
races;  the  humiliation  of  Confederate  soldiers  after  they  had 
been  paroled — in  general,  the  insecurity  felt  by  Southern  whites 
during  the  decade  after  the  collapse  of  the  Confederacy." 

The  constitution  of  the  Kuklux  Klan,  like  that  of  the  similar 
though  larger  organization,  the  Knights  of  the  White  Camelia 
and  several  smaller  groups  having  the  same  general  purposes, 
contained  certain  declarations  of  principles  which  Professor 
Fleming  thus  summarizes: 

"To  protect  and  succor  the  weak  and  unfortunate,  especially 
the  widows  and  orphans  of  Confederate  soldiers;  to  protect 
members  of  the  white  race  in  life,  honor  and  property  from  the 
encroachments  of  the  blacks;  to  oppose  the  Radical  Republican 
Party  and  the  Union  League ;  to  defend  constitutional  liberty, 
to  prevent  usurpation,  to  emancipate  the  whites,  maintain  peace 
and  order,  the  laws  of  God,  the  principles  of  1776  and  the 
political  and  social  supremacy  of  the  white  race — in  short,  to 
oppose  African  influence  in  government  and  society  and  to 
prevent  any  intermingling  of  the  races." 

Native  whites,  largely  disfranchised  because  of  their  active 
participation  in  the  rebellion,  formed  one  moiety  of  the  social 
structure  of  the  South  at  the  close  of  the  Civil  War;  the  other 
part  was  composed  of  the  newly  enfranchised  blacks,  the 
Northern  White  men  (called  "carpet-baggers")  who  participated 
in  the  effort  to  get  up  a  Negro  government  in  the  Southern 
States  and  a  modicum  of  native  whites  who  cooperated  with 
them,  known  as  "scalawags."  The  Kuklux  Movement  was  an 
effort  of  the  first  class  to  destroy  the  control  of  the  second 
class. 

"To  control  the  Negro,"  says  Professor  Fleming,  "the  Klan 
played  upon  his  superstitious  fears  by  having  night  patrols, 
parades  and  drills  of  silent  horsemen  covered  with  white  sheets, 
carrying  skulls  with  coals  of  fire  for  eyes,  sacks  of  bones 
to  rattle  and  wearing  hideous  masks.  Mysterious  signs  and 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  in 

warnings  were  sent  to  disorderly  Negro  politicians.  The  whites 
who  were  responsible  for  the  conduct  of  the  blacks  were  warned 
or  driven  away  by  social  or  business  ostracism  or  by  violence. 
Nearly  all  Southern  whites  *  *  *  took  part  in  the  Kuklux 
movement.  As  the  work  of  the  societies  succeeded  they  gradually 
passed  out  of  existence.  In  some  communities  they  fell  into  the 
control  of  violent  men  and  became  simply  bands  of  outlaws 
*  *  *  and  the  anarchial  aspects  of  the  movement  excited  the 
North  to  vigorous  condemnation." 

The  United  States  Congress  in  1871-72  enacted  laws  intended 
to  break  up  the  Kuklux  and  other  secret  societies;  several 
hundred  arrests  were  made  and  several  convictions  followed. 
Much  of  the  violence  was  checked,  but  the  movement  undoubt 
edly  accomplished  its  prime  purposes  of  giving  protection  to 
the  whites,  reducing  the  blacks  to  order,  driving  out  the  "carpet 
baggers"  and  nullifying  the  laws  that  had  placed  the  Southern 
whites  under  control  of  the  party  of  the  former  slaves. 

It  is  easy  to  see  from  the  above  sketch  whence  both  the 
Northerner  and  the  Southerner  derive  their  contrary  impressions 
of  the  organization.  The  former  remembers  the  congressional 
investigations  and  trials  of  the  Kuklux  leaders,  the  evidence 
adduced  of  violence  and  law-breaking,  of  the  whipping  of 
Negroes  and  of  carpet-baggers  and  'even  of  men  being  dragged 
from  their  beds  and  slain;  the  latter  remembers,  or  has  had 
handed  down  to  him  the  story  of  the  time  when,  to  quote  from 
Woodrow  Wilson's  "History  of  the  American  People,"  "adven 
turers  swarmed  out  of  the  North,  as  much  the  enemies  of  one 
race  as  of  the  other,  to  cozen,  beguile  and  use  the  Negroes.  The 
white  men  were  aroused  by  a  mere  instinct  of  self-preservation — 
until  at  last  there  sprung  into  existence  a  great  Kuklux  Klan, 
a  veritable  empire  of  the  South,  to  protect  the  Southern  country." 

That  the  occasion  which  gave  rise  to  the  original  Kuklux 
movement  was  a  real  crisis,  affecting  the  welfare  and  happiness 
of  a  whole  people,  the  impartial  historian  of  today  may  well 
concede;  that  in  meeting  the  crisis  by  the  means  that  were  used 
the  South  was  fighting  for  the  preservation  of  what  it  deemed 
right,  even  holy,  with  the  only  weapon  at  its  command,  is  hardly 
to  be  controverted. 

What  crisis,  what  menace  to  the  ideals  and  the  civilization 
of  any  considerable  body  of  people  exists  today  to  give  vitality 
to  the  revival  of  the  Kuklux  Klan  after  the  lapse  of  fifty  years? 


ii2  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

Unless  some  satisfying  answer  can  be  made  to  that  question, 
the  subject  is  hardly  one  to  be  treated  seriously;  unless  there 
exists  (or  it  is  believed  by  a  great  number  of  persons  that  there 
does  exist)  a  real  need  for  the  banding  together  of  native-born 
white  Christians  in  a  militant  organization  for  mutual  protec 
tion,  any  organization  based  on  such  a  premise  must  inevitably 
fall  to  pieces  of  its  own  weight.  And  while  the  original  Kuklux 
Klan  was  purely  sectional  in  its  activities,  whereas  the  revived 
Kuklux  Klan  is  extending  its  field  to  the  entire  United  States, 
the  ground  for  its  existence  and  continued  growth  must  be 
sought  in  national  rather  than  in  local  conditions. 

Part  of  the  answer  to  this  question  just  propounded  is  not 
difficult  to  deduce  from  such  of  the  literature  of  the  Kuklux  as 
is  permitted  to  be  distributed  to  those  not  affiliated  with  the 
organization ;  part  of  it  is  contained  in  statements  by  high 
officials  of  the  organization  or  published  with  their  sanction. 

Five  classes  of  persons  are  at  once  barred  by  the  pro 
nouncement.  They  are:  (i)  Negroes,  (2)  Japanese  and  other 
Orientals,  (3)  Roman  Catholics,  (4)  Jews,  (5)  all  foreign-born 
persons. 

Without  questioning  the  right  of  the  Kuklux  or  of  any  other 
organization  to  set  up  its  own  qualifications  for  membership  and 
to  exclude  any  individual  or  any  group  of  individuals,  it  is  of 
interest  to  note  that  the  four  groups  particularly  excluded  in 
this  instance  are,  each  in  degrees  varying  with  local  conditions, 
the  storm-centres  of  present-day  racial  antagonisms  in  the  United 
States. 

Anti-Semitic  propaganda  is  more  open  and  active  in  America 
than  at  any  time  in  recent  history. 

To  the  mass  mind  of  America  the  Irish  question  is  chiefly  a 
religious  question;  the  issue  at  stake  the  control  of  Ireland 
by  the  Roman  Catholic  Church,  and  the  persistent  effort  of  the 
American  supporters  of  Sinn  Fein  to  arouse  antagonism  in  this 
country  toward  England  a  subtle  piece  of  religious  propaganda. 
Quite  regardless  of  its  truth  or  falsity,  there  can  be  no  doubt 
of  the  wide  acceptance  of  this  view  by  a  large  proportion  of 
Protestant  Americans. 

That  the  Japanese  question  is  a  tremendously  vital  issue 
west  of  the  Rockies  is  a  familiar  fact  to  every  newspaper  reader ; 
it  is  equally  true  that  the  anti-Japanese  sentiment  of  the  Pacific 
Coast  is  shared  by  a  large  proportion  of  Americans  in  other 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  113 

sections,  who  have  become  convinced  that  the  interests  of  the 
nation  are  seriously  menaced  by  Japanese  occupation  of  California 
lands  and  that  war  with  Japan  may  occur  at  any  time. 

New  impetus  has  been  given  to  the  Negro  question,  more 
particularly  in  the  South,  but  to  some  extent  throughout  the 
country,  by  conditions  arising  from  the  war.  The  great  demand 
for  labor  during  the  war  brought  about  the  greatest  migration 
in  history  of  Negroes  from  the  South  to  the  North.  High 
wages,  North  and  South,  raised  the  Negro  for  a  time  to 
unheard-of  pinnacles  of  affluence.  Then  the  sudden  slump  in 
business  threw  back  into  idleness  thousands  who  had  become 
accustomed  to  "easy  money."  Many  of  these  found  themselves 
hundreds  of  miles  from  their  homes  with  no  means  of  returning; 
large  fractions  of  the  whole  number  had  forgotten  their  old 
habit  of  docility  in  their  brief  period  of  financial  independence 
and  ventured  to  assert  their  rights  as  citizens  in  a  manner 
offensive  to  the  dominant  white  race. 

Renewed  agitation  for  the  recognition  of  the  Negro  on  the 
plane  of  complete  equality  with  the  whites  was  one  of  the 
inevitable  results  of  the  war  conditions  that  put  the  Negro  worker 
on  the  same  economic  plane  with  the  white  workman;  the 
Negro  soldier  and  officer  into  the  same  uniform  and  the  same 
service  as  the  white  soldier.  The  demands  of  the  National 
Association  for  the  Advancement  of  the  Colored  People  for 
the  abolition  of  segregation  of  the  races  in  the  Government 
departments  at  Washington,  the  reduction  of  Congressional 
representation  in  the  Southern  States  in  proportion  as  the 
Negro  is  disfranchised,  the  pardon  of  the  imprisoned  soldiers 
of  the  Twenty-fourth  Infantry  held  in  Leavenworth  for  the 
Houston  riots,  the  abolition  of  "Jim  Crow"  cars  on  interstate 
railroad  trains  and  the  appointment  of  Negro  Assistant  Secre 
taries  of  Labor  and  Agriculture  are  pointed  to  by  officials  of 
the  Kuklux  Klan  as  proof  that  white  supremacy  is  now  acutely 
and  nationally  menaced.  The  N.  A.  A.  C.  P.,  in  turn,  has  included 
in  its  published  statement  of  purposes  "The  defeat,  by  every 
legitimate  means,  of  the  nefarious  Kuklux  Klan,  both  South 
and  North."  So  the  issue  here,  at  least,  is  squarely  joined. 

It  is  on  such  grounds  as  those  just  enumerated  that  the 
revived  Kuklux  Klan  bases  its  expectation  of  extending  beyond 
the  boundaries  of  the  South.  It  has  been  in  existence,  this 
present-day  successor  of  the  old  Kuklux,  since  the  latter  part 


ii4  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

of  1915,  when  it  was  chartered  as  a  legitimate  fraternal  organ 
ization  by  the  State  of  Georgia.  The  originator  of  the  idea 
of  reviving  the  old  institution  under  the  old  name  was  Colonel 
William  Joseph  Simmons  of  Atlanta,  now  Professor  of  Southern 
History  in  Lanier  University.  Associated  with  him  in  the 
application  for  the  charter  from  the  State  of  Georgia  were 
three  surviving  members  of  the  old  Kuklux  Klan.  By  virtue 
of  this  fact  the  new  Klan  declares  itself,  in  its  constitution,  to  be 
the  only  legitimate  heir  of  the  original  organization,  with  sole 
rights  to  all  its  signs,  symbols,  regalias,  etc.  It  is  organized  on 
similar  lines  to  the  original  Kuklux  Klan,  with  similar  though 
slightly  different  titles  for  its  officers.  Colonel  Simmons  is 
the  "Imperial  Wizard"  or  supreme  head  of  the  order,  the  full 
title  of  which  is  "The  Invisible  Empire,  Knights  of  the  Kuklux 
Klan."  The  old  regalia  of  white  robe  and  pointed  cap  covering 
the  face  of  the  wearer  is  retained  by  the  new  organization, 
which  claims  to  be  fully  organized  throughout  the  South  and 
to  have  a  considerable  number  of  local  nuclei  planted  in  half  or 
more  of  the  states. 

Cooperation  with  the  authorities  of  the  law  is  set  forth  as 
one  of  the  tenets  of  the  revived  Kuklux  Klan.  "Because  certain 
individuals  at  various  times  have  committed  acts  of  violence 
under  cover  of  darkness  and  shielded  by  masks  and  robes 
somewhat  resembling  the  official  regalia  of  the  Kuklux  Klan," 
says  one  of  the  organization's  official  pronouncements,"  they 
have  been  classed  as  members  of  this  organization.  The  Kuklux 
Klan  is  a  strictly  law  abiding  organization,  and  every  member 
is  sworn  to  uphold  the  law  at  all  times  and  to  assist  officers 
of  the  law  in  preserving  peace  and  order  whenever  the  occasion 
may  arise,  and  any  member  violating  this  oath  would  be  banished 
forever  from  the  organization. 

"Among  the  principles  for  which  this  organization  stands  are : 
Suppression  of  graft  by  public  office  holders ;  preventing  the 
causes  of  mob  violence  and  lynchings ;  preventing  unwarranted 
strikes  by  foreign  agitators;  sensible  and  patriotic  immigration 
laws,  sovereignity  of  State  rights  under  the  Constitution ;  separa 
tion  of  Church  and  State,  and  freedom  of  speech  and  press, 
a  freedom  such  as  does  not  strike  at  nor  imperil  our  Govern 
ment  or  the  cherished  institutions  of  our  people." 

Among  the  membership  of  the  Old  Kuklux  Klan  were  many 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  115 

Northern  soldiers,  members  of  the  Army  of  Occupation  sent 
into  the  South  after  the  Civil  War  to  preserve  order  and  main 
tain  the  reconstruction  governments  in  power.  In  the  new 
Kuklux  Klan  it  is  stated  are  to  be  found  State,  county  and 
municipal  officials  of  every  degree,  police  officers  and  men,  as 
well  as  a  number  of  United  States  officials,  Senators  and  Mem 
bers  of  Congress. 

How  the  Klan  operates  may  best  be  indicated  by  quoting 
from  statements  publicly  made  by  authority  of  its  national 
officials.  Birmingham,  Ala.,  recently  had  a  "wave  of  crime." 
The  Kuklux  Klan  offered  its  services  to  the  city  officials  to 
help  stamp  out  evil  conditions.  The  offer  was  accepted,  and 
the  seven  hundred  local  members  directed  their  efforts,  in  secret, 
against  criminals  and  "undesirables"  of  both  races.  Their  claim 
that  they  rendered  valuable  assistance  to  the  police  is  supported 
by  the  fact  that  they  assert  that  the  Chief  of  Police  of  Birming 
ham  sent  a  telegram  to  the  Chief  of  Police  of  Nashville,  Tenn. 
when  he  learned  that  a  branch  of  the  organization  was  to  be 
established  there,  heartily  endorsing  the  Kuklux  movement.  They 
claim  that  many  such  letters  and  telegrams  of  endorsement  from 
Mayors,  Sheriffs,  and  Chiefs  of  Police  of  Southern  cities  are 
on  file  in  the  Klan's  headquarters. 

The  power  of  the  Kuklux  Klan  today  like  that  of  its  prototype 
of  half  a  century  ago,  lies  in  the  secrecy  of  mystery  with  which 
it  and  its  operations  are  surrounded.  Its  members  are  known 
only  to  each  other  and  may  not  disclose  the  fact  of  their 
membership  to  outsiders.  Outside  the  Klan  none  can  know 
whether  its  warnings  are  backed  by  ten  men  or  thousands  in 
any  community.  To  the  assertion  that  there  is  no  need  and  no 
room  for  such  an  extra-legal  institution  to  enforce  law  and 
order,  the  officers  of  the  Klan  point  to  the  newspaper  chronicles 
of  crime  and  disorder  in  every  part  of  the  country.  To  the 
charge  that  they  are  a  Negro-whipping  organization,  thriving 
on  race  prejudice,  they  reply  that  no  law-abiding  person  of  any 
race,  creed  or  color  has  anything  to  fear  from  them;  they 
assert  that  they  are  the  friends  of  every  self-respecting  man, 
black  or  white,  but  that  they  maintain  the  inherent  superiority 
of  the  Caucasian  stock,  and  that  their  order  intends  to  use 
every  legitimate  means  to  retain  it  in  control  of  America. 


ii6  SELECTED   ARTICLES 


SOCIAL  BASIS  OF  RACE  PREJUDICE ' 

Even  if  there  is  neither  a  biological  nor  a  psychological 
justification  for  the  popular  belief  in  the  inferiority  of  the 
Negro  race,  the  social  basis  of  the  race  prejudice  in  America 
is  not  difficult  to  understand.  The  prejudice  is  founded  essen 
tially  on  the  tendency  of  the  human  mind  to  merge  the  individual 
in  the  class  to  which  he  belongs,  and  to  ascribe  to  him  all  the 
characteristics  of  his  class.  It  does  not  even  require  a  marked 
difference  in  type,  such  as  we  find  when  we  compare  Negro  and 
white,  to  provoke  the  spirit  that  prevents  us  from  recognizing 
individuals  and  compels  us  to  see  only  representatives  of  a  class 
endowed  with  imaginary  qualities  that  we  ascribe  to  the  group 
as  a  whole.  We  find  this  spirit  at  work  in  anti-Semitism  as 
well  as  in  American  nativism,  and  in  the  conflict  between  labor 
and  capitalism.  We  have  recently  seen  it  at  its  height  in  the 
emotions  called  forth  by  the  World  War. 

It  is  not  by  any  means  the  class  consciousness  of  the  segre 
gated  group  that  determines  this  feeling.  It  is  rather  the 
consciousness  of  the  outsider  who  combines  a  large  number 
of  individuals  in  a  group  and  thus  assigns  to  each  the  same 
character.  The  less  feeling  of  unity  the  heterogeneous  members 
of  the  group  possess,  the  harder  it  is  for  them  to  bear  the 
discrimination  under  which  they  suffer. 

This  is  obviously  the  psychological  basis  of  the  present 
situation  of  the  American  Negro.  To  the  popular  mind,  the 
Negro  appears  as  a  class,  and  the  impressions  made  by  the 
life  of  the  poor  Negro  are  generalized  by  the  white  man  and 
are  combined  with  dogmatic  beliefs  regarding  the  physical  and 
hereditary  mental  make-up  of  the  race.  The  consciousness 
that  the  Negro  belongs  to  a  class  by  himself  is  kept  alive  by  the 
contrast  presented  by  his  physical  appearance  with  that  of  the 
whites.  For  the  descendants  of  the  Teutonic  peoples  of  Northern 
Europe,  this  consciousness  has  attained  a  high  emotional  value. 
It  is  natural  that  the  stronger  the  individuality  of  a  person  who 
is  thus  assigned  to  a  class  with  which  he  has  little  in  common, 
the  stronger  must  also  be  his  resentment  against  those  who 
refuse  to  take  him  at  his  individual  worth.  Every  moment  of 
his  life,  the  self-respecting  Negro  feels  the  strain  of  his  inability 

1  From  article,  Problem  of  the  American  Negro,  by  Franz  Boas.  Yale 
Review.  10:384-95.  January,  1921. 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  117 

to  overcome  the  prejudices  that  merge  him  in  a  type.  This 
resentment  will  grow  in  extent  as  individual  achievement  develops 
among  the  Negroes  while  they  are  still  not  valued  as  individuals. 

It  is  easier  to  point  out  the  causes  of  conflict  between  whites 
and  Negroes  than  to  formulate  a  remedy.  If  my  view  is  correct, 
it  is  clear  that  the  only  fundamental  remedy  for  the  situation 
is  the  recognition  that  the  Negroes  have  the  right  to  be  treated 
as  individuals,  not  as  members  of  a  class.  But  how  can  this 
be  brought  about  in  a  population  that  is  so  deeply  saturated  with 
class  consciousness  as  our  own?  Even  if,  in  the  education  of 
the  young,  the  importance  of  individual  differences  were  empha 
sized  so  that  an  intelligent  understanding  could  be  attained  of 
the  irrationality  of  the  assumption  that  all  Negroes  are  inferior, 
we  should  not  effectively  overcome  the  general  human  tendency 
of  forming  groups  that  in  the  mind  of  the  outsider  are  held 
together  by  his  emotional  attitude  toward  them.  In  other 
words,  the  hostile  feeling  of  each  individual  to  foreign  social 
groups  would  not  be  eradicated. 

Mankind  has  travelled  a  long  road  from  the  time  when 
every  stranger  was  an  enemy.  According  to  our  modern  theo 
retical  standards,  we  maintain  that  justice  should  be  given  to 
the  individual,  that  it  should  not  be  meted  out  to  him  as  to  a 
representative  of  his  class.  And  still,  how  very  far  removed 
are  we  from  the  realization  of  this  ideal !  The  natural  habit  of 
protecting  ourselves  against  a  supposedly  hostile  foreign  group 
determines  our  life  in  great  matters  as  well  as  in  small  details, 
and  the  life  of  nations  as  well  as  the  life  of  the  individual  and 
of  the  family. 

For  this  reason  there  is  no  great  hope  that  the  Negro  problem 
will  find  even  a  half-way  satisfactory  solution  in  our  day. 
We  may,  perhaps,  expect  that  an  increasing  number  of  strong 
minds  will  free  themselves  from  race  prejudice  and  see  in  every- 
person  a  man  entitled  to  be  judged  on  his  merits.  The  weak- 
minded  will  not  follow  their  example. 


THE  HEART  OF  THE  RACE  PROBLEM  1 

One  wrong  produces  other  wrongs  as  surely  and  as  naturally 
as    the    seed    of    the    thorn    produces    other    thorns.      Men    do 

1From  article  by  Archibald   H.   Grimke,  A.M.     Arena.     35=29-32.    Jan 
uary,    1906. 


n8  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

not  in  the  moral-world  gather  figs  from  a  thorn-bush  any  more 
than  they  do  in  the  vegetable-world.  What  they  sow  in  either 
world,  that  they  reap.  Such  is  the  law.  The  earth  is  bound 
under  all  circumstances  and  conditions  of  time  and  place  to  re 
produce  life,  action,  conduct,  character,  each  after  its  own  kind. 
Men  cannot  cause  what  is  bad  to  bring  forth  what  is  good. 
Truth  does  not  come  out  of  error,  light  out  of  darkness,  love 
out  of  hate,  justice  out  of  injustice,  liberty  out  of  slavery.  No, 
error  produces  more  error,  darkness  more  darkness,  hate  more 
hate,  injustice  more  injustice,  slavery  more  slavery.  That  which 
we  do  is  that  which  we  are,  and  that  which  we  shall  be. 

The  great  law  of  reproduction  which  applies  without  shadow 
of  change  to  individual  life,  applies  equally  to  the  life  of  that 
aggregation  of  individuals  called  a  race  or  nation.  Not  any 
more  than  an  individual  can  they  do  wrong  with  impunity,  can 
they  commit  a  bad  deed  without  reaping  in  return  the  results 
in  kind.  There  is  nothing  more  certain  than  that  the  wrong 
done  by  people  shall  reappear  to  plague  them,  if  not  in  one 
generation,  then  in  another.  For  the  consummation  of  a  bad 
thought  in  a  bad  act  puts  what  is  bad  in  the  act  beyond  the 
control  of  the  actor.  The  evil  thus  escapes  out  of  the  Pandora- 
box  of  the  heart,  of  the  mind,  to  reproduce  and  to  multiply 
itself  a  hundredfold  and  in  a  hundred  ways  in  the  complex 
relationships  of  men  with  men  in  human  society.  And  then  it 
returns  not  as  it  issued  singly,  but  with  its  related  brood  of  ill 
consequences : 

"But  in  these  cases, 

We    still  have  judgment   here;    that   we  but  teach 
Bloody  instructions,  which  being  taught  return 
To  plague  the  inventor:    this  even-handed  justice 
Commends  the  ingredients   of  our  poisoned  chalice 
To   our  own  lips." 

The  ship  which  landed  at  Jamestown  in  1619  with  a  cargo  of 
African  slaves  for  Virginia  plantations,  imported  at  the  same 
time  into  America  with  its  slave-cargo  certain  seed-principles  of 
wrong.  As  the  slaves  reproduced  after  their  kind,  so  did  these 
seed-principles  of  wrong  reproduce  likewise  after  their  kind. 
Wherever  slavery  rooted  itself,  they  rooted  themselves  also. 
The  one  followed  the  other  with  the  regularity  of  a  law  of 
nature,  the  invariability  of  the  law  of  cause  and  effect.  As 
slavery  grew  and  multiplied  and  spread  itself  over  the  land,  the 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  119 

evils  begotten  of  slavery  grew,  and  multiplied,  and  spread  them 
selves  over  the  life  of  the  people,  black  and  white  alike.  The 
winds  which  blew  North  carried  the  seeds,  and  the  winds  which 
blew  South ;  and  wherever  they  went,  wherever  they  fell,  whether 
East  or  West,  they  sprang  up  to  bear  fruit  in  the  characters  of 
men,  in  the  conduct  of  a  growing  people. 

The  enslavement  of  one  race  by  another  produces  necessarily 
certain  moral  effects  upon  both  races,  moral  deterioration  of 
the  masters,  moral  degradation  of  the  slaves.  The  deeper  the 
degradation  of  the  one,  the  greater  will  be  the  deterioration  of 
the  other,  and  vice  versa.  Indeed,  slavery  is  a  breeding-bed, 
a  sort  of  compost  heap,  where  the  best  qualities  of  both  races 
decay  and  become  food  for  the  worst.  The  brute  appetites  and 
passions  of  the  two  act  and  react  on  the  moral  natures  of  each 
race  with  demoralizing  effects.  The  subjection  of  the  will  of 
one  race  under  such  circumstances  to  the  will  of  another  begets 
in  the  race  that  rules  cruelty  and  tyranny,  and  in  the  one  that 
is  ruled,  fear,  cunning  and  deceit.  The  lust,  the  passions,  of 
the  master-class  act  powerfully  on  the  lust,  the  passions,  of 
the  slave-class,  and  those  of  the  slave-class  react  not  less  power 
fully  on  those  of  the  master-class.  The  greater  the  cruelty, 
tyranny  and  lust  of  the  one,  the  greater  will  be  the  cunning. 
deceit  and  lust  of  the  other.  And  there  is  no  help  for  this  so  long 
as  the  one  race  rules  and  the  other  race  is  ruled,  so  long  as 
there  exists  between  them  in  the  state  inequality  of  rights,  of 
conditions,  based  solely  on  the  racehood  of  each. 


TRAGEDY  OF  COLOR1 

I  seem  to  find  the  same  hastiness  and  something  of  the  same 
note  of  harshness  that  strike  me  in  the  cases  of  MacQueen  and 
Gorky  in  America's  treatment  of  her  colored  population.  I  am 
aware  how  intricate,  how  multitudinous,  the  aspects  of  this 
enormous  question  have  become ;  but  looking  at  it  in  the  broad 
and  transitory  manner  I  have  proposed  for  myself  in  these 
papers,  it  does  seem  to  present  many  parallel  elements.  There 
is  the  same  disposition  toward  an  indiscriminating  verdict,  the 
same  disregard  of  proportion  as  between  small  evils  and  great 

iFrom  article,  Future  in  America,  by  H.  G.  Wells,  Harper's  Weekly. 
50:1317-19.  September  15,  1906. 


120  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

ones,  the  same  indifference  to  the  fact  that  the  question  does 
not  stand  alone,  but  is  a  part  and  this  time  a  by  no  means  small 
part  in  the  working  out  of  America's  destinies. 

In  relation  to  the  colored  population,  just  as  in  relation  to 
the  great  and  growing  accumulations  of  unassimilated  and 
increasingly  unpopular  Jews,  and  to  the  great  and  growing 
multitudes  of  Roman  Catholics  whose  special  education  contra 
dicts  at  so  many  points  those  conceptions  of  individual  judgment 
and  responsibility  upon  which  America  relies,  I  have  attempted 
time  after  time  to  get  some  answer  from  the  Americans  I  have 
met  to  what  is  to  me  the  most  obvious  of  questions.  "Your 
grandchildren  and  the  grandchildren  of  these  people  will  have 
to  live  in  this  country  side  by  side ;  do  you  propose,  do  you 
believe  it  possible,  that  they  should  be  living  then  in  just  the 
same  relations  that  you  and  these  people  are  living  now;  if  you 
do  not,  then  what  relations  do  you  propose  shall  exist  between 
them?" 

It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  I  have  never  once  had  the  be 
ginnings  of  an  answer  to  this  question.  Usually  one  is  told  with 
great  gravity  that  the  problem  of  color  is  one  of  the  most  diffi 
cult  that  we  have  to  consider  and  the  conversation  then  breaks 
up  into  discursive  anecdotes  and  statements  about  black  peo 
ple.  One  man  will  dwell  upon  the  uncontrollable  violence  of 
a  black  man's  evil  passions  (in  Jamaica  and  Barbadoes  col 
ored  people  form  an  overwhelming  proportion  of  the  popula 
tion,  and  they  have  behaved  in  an  exemplary  fashion  for  the 
last  thirty  years)  ;  another  will  dilate  upon  the  incredible 
stupidity  of  the  full-blooded  Negro  (during  my  stay  in  New 
York  the  prize  for  oratory  at  Columbia  University,  oratory 
which  was  the  one  redeeming  charm  of  Daniel  Webster,  was 
awarded  to  a  Zulu  of  unmitigated  blackness)  ;  a  third  will 
speak  of  his  physical  offensiveness;  his  peculiar  smell  which 
necessitates  his  social  isolation  (most  well-to-do-Southerners 
are  brought  up  by  Negro  "mammies")  ;  others,  again,  will  en 
ter  upon  the  painful  history  of  the  years  that  followed  the 
war,  though  it  seems  a  foolish  thing  to  let  those  wrongs  of 
the  past  dominate  the  outlook  for  the  future.  And  one  charm 
ing  Southern  lady  expressed  the  attitude  of  mind  of  a  whole 
class  very  completely,  I  think,  when  she  said,  "You  have 
to  be  one  of  us  to  feel  this  question  at  all  as  it  ought  to  be  felt." 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  121 

There,  I  think,  I  got  something  tangible.  There  emotions  are 
a  cult. 

My  globe-trotting  impudence  will  seem,  no  doubt,  to  mount 
to  its  zenith  when  I  declare  that  hardly  any  Americans  at  all 
seem  to  be  in  possession  of  the  elementary  facts  in  relation  to 
this  question.  These  broad  facts  are  not  taught,  as  of  course 
they  ought  to  be  taught,  in  school;  and  what  each  man  knows 
is  picked  up  by  the  accidents  of  his  own  untrained  observation, 
by  conversation  always  tinctured  by  personal  prejudice,  by  hastily 
read  newspapers  and  magazine  articles  and  the  like.  The  quality 
of  this  discussion  is  very  variable,  but  on  the  whole  pretty  low. 
While  I  was  in  New  York  opinion  was  very  much  swayed  by  an 
article  in,  if  I  remember  rightly,  the  Century  Magazine,  by  a 
gentleman  who  had  deduced  from  a  few  weeks'  observation  in 
the  slums  of  Khartoum  the  entire  incapacity  of  the  Negro  to 
establish  a  civilization  of  his  own.  He  never  had,  therefore 
he  never  could,  a  discouraging  ratiocination.  We  English,  a 
century  ago,  said  all  these  things  of  the  native  Irish.  If  there 
is  any  trend  of  opinion  at  all  in  this  matter  at  present,  it  lies 
in  the  direction  of  a  generous  decision  on  the  part  of  the  North 
and  West  to  leave  the  black  more  and  more  to  the  judgment 
and  mercy  of  the  white  people  with  whom  he  is  locally  associated. 
This  judgment  and  mercy  points,  on  the  whole,  to  an  accentuation 
of  the  colored  man's  natural  inferiority,  to  the  cessation  of  any 
other  educational  attempts  than  those  that  increase  his  industrial 
usefulness,  (it  is  already  illegal  in  Louisiana  to  educate  him 
above  a  contemptible  level),  to  his  industrial  exploitation  through 
usury  and  legal  chicane,  and  to  a  systematic  strengthening  of 
social  barriers  between  colored  people  of  whatever  shade  and 
the  whites. 

Meanwhile,  in  this  state  of  general  confusion,  in  the  absence 
of  any  determining  rules  or  assumptions,  all  sorts  of  things  are 
happening — according  to  the  accidents  of  local  feeling.  In  Massa 
chusetts  you  have  people  with,  I  am  afraid,  an  increasing  sense 
of  sacrifice  to  principle,  lunching  and  dining  with  people  of 
color.  They  do  it  less  than  they  did,  I  was  told.  Massachusetts 
stands,  I  believe,  at  the  top  of  the  scale  of  tolerant  humanity. 
One  seems  to  reach  the  bottom  at  Springfield,  Missouri,  which 
is  a  county  seat  with  a  college,  an  academy,  a  high  school,  and 
a  zoological  garden.  There  the  exemplary  method  reaches  the 


122  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

nadir.  Last  April  three  unfortunate  Negroes  were  burnt  to 
death,  apparently  because  they  were  Negroes,  and  as  a  general 
corrective  of  impertinence.  They  seem  to  have  been  innocent 
of  any  particular  offence.  It  was  a  sort  of  racial  sacrament. 
The  edified  Sunday-school  children  hurried  from  their  gospel- 
teaching  to  search  for  souvenirs  among  the  ashes,  and  competed 
with  great  spirit  for  a  fragment  of  charred  skull. 

It  is  true  that  in  this  latter  case  Governor  Folk  acted  with 
vigor  and  justice  and  that  the  better  element  of  Springfield 
society  was  evidently  shocked  when  it  was  found  that  quite 
innocent  Negroes  had  been  used  in  these  instructive  pyrotechnics ; 
but  the  fact  remains  that  a  large  and  numerically  important 
section  of  the  American  public  does  think  that  fierce  and  cruel 
reprisals  are  a  necessary  part  of  the  system  of  relationships 
between  white  and  colored  men.  In  our  dispersed  British  com 
munity  we  have  almost  exactly  the  same  range  between  our 
better  attitudes  and  our  worse — I'm  making  no  claim  of  national 
superiority.  In  London,  perhaps,  we  outdo  Massachusetts  in 
liberality;  in  the  National  Liberal  Club  or  the  Reform  a  black 
man  meets  all  the  courtesies  of  humanity — as  though  there  was 
no  such  thing  as  color.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  the  Cape  won't 
bear  looking  into  for  a  moment.  The  same  conditions  give  the 
same  results;  a  half-educated  white  population  of  British  or 
Dutch  or  German  ingredients  greedy  for  gain,  ill  controlled  and 
feebly  influenced,  in  contact  with  a  black  population,  is  bound 
to  reproduce  the  same  brutal  and  stupid  aggressions,  the  same 
half  honest  prejudices  to  justify  those  aggressions,  the  same 
ugly,  mean  excuses.  "Things  are  better  in  Jamaica  and  Bar- 
badoes,"  said  I,  in  a  moment  of  patriotic  weakness,  to  Mr. 
Booker  T.  Washington. 

"Eh!"  said  he,  and  thought  in  that  long  silent  way  he  has 
.  .  .  "They're  worse  in  South  Africa — much.  Here  we've  got 
a  sort  of  light.  We  know  generally  what  we've  got  to  stand. 
There—." 

His  words  sent  my  memory  back  to  some  conversations  I  had 
quite  recently  with  a  man  from  a  dry-goqds  store  in  Johannes 
burg.  He  gave  me  clearly  enough  the  attitude  of  the  common 
white  out  there;  the  dull  prejudice;  the  readiness  to  take 
advantage  of  the  "boy" ;  the  utter  disrespect  for  colored  woman 
kind;  the  savage,  intolerant  resentment,  dashed  dangerously 
with  fear,  when  the  native  raises  his  head.  (Think  of  all  that 


THE   NEGRO   PROBLEM  123 

must  have  happened  in  wrongful  practice  and  wrongful  law 
and  neglected  educational  possibilities  before  our  Zulus  in  Natal 
were  goaded  to  face  massacre,  spear  against  rifle).  The  rare 
and  culminating  result  of  education  and  experience  is  to  enable 
men  to  grasp  facts,  to  balance  justly  among  their  fluctuating 
and  innumerable  aspects,  and  only  a  small  minority  in  our  world 
is  educated  to  that  pitch.  Ignorant  people  can  think  only  in 
types  and  abstractions,  can  achieve  only  emphatic  absolute 
decisions,  and  when  the  commonplace  American  or  the  common 
place  colonial  Briton  sets  to  work  to  "think  over"  the  Negro 
problem,  he  instantly  banishes  most  of  the  material  evidence 
from  his  mind — clears  for  action,  as  it  were.  He  forgets  the 
genial  carriage  of  the  ordinary  colored  man,  his  beaming  face, 
his  kindly  eye,  his  rich,  jolly  voice,  his  touching  and  trusted 
friendliness,  his  amiable,  unprejudiced  readiness  to  serve  and 
follow  a  white  man  who  seems  to  know  what  he  is  doing.  He 
forgets — perhaps  he  has  never  seen — the  dear  humanity  of  these 
people,  their  slightly  exaggerated  vanity,  their  innocent  and 
delightful  love  of  color  and  song,  their  immense  capacity  for 
affection  and  warm  romantic  touch  in  their  imaginations.  He 
ignores  the  real  fineness  of  the  indolence  that  despises  servile 
toil,  of  the  carelessness  that  disdains  the  watchful  aggressive 
economics,  day  by  day,  now  a  wretched  little  gain  here  and  now 
a  wretched  little  gain  there,  that  make  the  dirty  fortune  of  the 
Russian  Jews  who  prey  upon  color  in  the  Carolinas.  No ;  in 
the  place  of  all  these  amiable  every-day  experiences  he  lets  his 
imagination  go  to  work  upon  a  monster,  the  "real  nigger." 

"Ah !  you  don't  know  the  real  nigger,"  said  one  American  to 
me  when  I  praised  the  colored  people  I  had  seen.  "You  should 
see  the  buck  Nigger  down  South,  Congo  brand.  Then  you'd 
understand  sir." 

His  voice,  his  face  had  a  gleam  of  passionate  animosity. 

One  could  see  he  had  been  brooding  himself  out  of  all  rela 
tions  to  reality  in  this  matter.  He  was  a  man  beyond  reason 
or  pity.  He  was  obsessed.  Hatred  of  that  imaginary  diabolical 
"buck  Nigger"  blackened  his  soul.  It  was  no  good  to  talk  to  him 
of  the  "buck  American,  Packingtown  brand,"  or  the  "buck 
Englishman,  suburban  race-meeting  type,"  and  to  ask  him  if 
these  intensely  disagreeable  persons  justified  outrages  on  Sen 
ator  Lodge,  let  us  say,  or  Mrs.  Longworth.  No  reply  would 
have  come  from  him.  "You  don't  understand  the  question," 


124  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

he  would  have  answered.  "You  don't  know  how  we  Southerners 
feel." 

Well,  one  can  make  a  tolerable  guess. 

I  certainly  did  not  begin  to  realize  one  most  important  aspect 
of  this  question  until  I  reached  America.  I  thought  of  those 
eight  millions  as  of  men,  black  as  ink.  But  when  I  met  Mr. 
Booker  T.  Washington,  for  example,  I  met  a  man  certainly  as 
white  in  appearance  as  our  Admiral  Fisher,  who  is,  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  quite  white.  A  very  large  proportion  of  these  colored 
people,  indeed,  is  more  than  half  white.  One  hears  a  good  deal 
about  the  high  social  origins  of  the  Southern  Planters,  very 
many  derive  indisputably  from  the  first  families  of  England. 
It  is  the  same  blood  that  flows  in  these  mixed  colored  people's 
veins.  Just  think  of  the  sublime  absurdity,  therefore,  of  the  ban. 
There  are  gentlemen  of  education  and  refinement,  qualified  law 
yers  and  doctors,  whose  ancestors  assisted  in  the  Norman  Con 
quest,  and  they  dare  not  enter  a  car  marked  "white"  and  intrude 
upon  the  dignity  of  the  rising  loan-monger  from  Esthonia.  For 
them  the  "Jim  Crow"  car.  .  . 

One  tries  to  put  that  aspect  to  the  American  in  vain.  "These 
people,"  you  say,  "are  nearer  your  blood,  nearer  your  temper, 
than  any  of  those  bright-eyed,  ringleted  immigrants  on  the 
East  Side.  Are  you  ashamed  of  your  poor  relations?  Even  if 
you  don't  like  the  half,  or  the  quarter  of  the  Negro  blood,  you 
might  deal  civilly  with  the  three-quarters  white.  It  doesn't  say 
much  for  your  faith  in  your  own  racial  prepotency,  any 
how.  .  ." 

The  answer  to  that  is  usually  in  terms  of  mania. 

It  is  to  the  tainted  whites  my  sympathies  go  out.  The  black 
or  mainly  black  people  seem  to  be  fairly  content  with  their 
inferiority;  one  sees  them  all  about  the  States  as  waiters,  cab- 
drivers,  railway  porters,  car  attendants,  laborers  of  various  sorts, 
a  pleasant-smiling,  acquiescent  folk.  But  consider  the  case  of 
a  man  with  a  broader  brain  than  such  small  uses  need,  conscious, 
perhaps,  of  exceptional  gifts,  capable  of  wide  interests  and 
sustained  attempts,  who  is  perhaps  as  English  as  you  or  I,  with 
just  a  touch  of  color  in  his  eyes,  in  his  lips,  in  his  finger-nails, 
and  in  his  imagination.  Think  of  the  accumulating  sense  of 
injustice  he  must  bear  with  him  through  life,  the  perpetual 
slight  and  insult  he  must  undergo  from  all  that  is  vulgar  and 
brutal  among  the  whites !  Something  of  that  one  may  read  in  the 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  125 

sorrowful  pages  of  DuBois's  The  Souls  of  Black  Folk.  They 
would  have  made  Alexandre  Dumas  travel  in  the  Jim  Crow  car 
if  he  had  come  to  Virginia.  But  I  can  imagine  some  sort  of 
protest  on  the  part  of  that  admirable  but  extravagant  man. 
.  .  .  They  even  talk  of  "Jim  Crow  elevators"  now  in  Southern 
hotels. 

I  argued  strongly  against  the  view  he1  seems  to  hold  that 
black  and  white  might  live  without  mingling  and  without  injus 
tice,  side  by  side.  That  I  do  not  believe.  Racial  differences 
seem  to  me  always  to  exasperate  intercourse  unless  people  have 
been  trained  to  ignore  them.  Uneducated  men  are  as  bad  as 
cattle  in  persecuting  all  that  is  different  among  themselves.  The 
most  miserable  and  disorderly  countries  of  the  world  are  the 
countries  where  two  races,  two  inadequate  cultures,  keep  a 
jarring,  continuous  separation.  "You  must  repudiate  separation," 
I  said.  "No  peoples  have  ever  yet  endured  the  tension  of  inter 
mingled  distinctness."  . 

May  we  not  become  a  peculiar  people — like  the  Jews?  he 
suggested.  "Isn't  that  possible?" 

But  there  I  could  not  agree  with  him.  I  thought  of  the 
dreadful  history  of  the  Jews  and  Armenians.  And  the  Negro 
cannot  do  what  the  Jews  and  Armenians  have  done.  The  colored 
people  of  America  are  of  different  quality  from  the  Jew  alto 
gether,  more  genial,  more  careless,  more  sympathetic,  franker,  less 
intellectual,  less  acquisitive,  less  wary  and  restrained — in  a  word, 
more  Occidental.  They  have  no  common  religion  and  culture,  no 
conceit  of  themselves  to  hold  them  together.  The  Jews  make  a 
ghetto  for  themselves  wherever  they  go;  no  law  but  their  own 
solidarity  has  given  America  the  East  Side.  The  colored  people 
are  ready  to  disperse  and  interbreed,  are  not  a  community  at 
all  in  the  Jewish  sense,  but  outcasts  from  a  community.  They 
are  the  victims  of  a  prejudice  that  has  to  be  destroyed.  These 
things  I  urged,  but  it  was,  I  think,  empty  speech  to  my  hearer. 
I  could  talk  lightly  of  destroying  that  prejudice,  but  he  knew 
better.  It  was  the  central  fact  of  his  life,  a  law  of  his  being. 
He  has  shaped  all  his  projects  and  policy  upon  that.  Exclusion 
•  is  inevitable.  So  he  dreams  of  a  colored  race  of  decent  and 
inaggressive  men  silently  giving  the  lie  to  all  the  legend  of  their 
degradation.  They  will  have  their  own  doctors,  their  own  law 
yers,  their  own  capitalists,  their  own  banks— because  the  whites 

1  Booker  T.  Washington. 


126  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

desire  it  so.  But  will  the  uneducated  whites  endure  even  so 
submissive  a  vindication  as  that?  Will  they  suffer  the  horrid 
spectacle  of  free  and  self-satisfied  Negroes  in  decent  clothing  on 
any  terms  without  resentment? 

Whatever  America  has  to  show  in  heroic  living  today,  I 
doubt  if  she  can  show  anything  finer  than  the  quality  of  the 
resolve,  the  steadfast  effort  hundreds  of  black  and  colored  men 
are  making  today  to  live  blamelessly,  honorably,  and  patiently, 
getting  for  themselves  what  scraps  of  refinement,  learning  and 
beauty  they  may,  keeping  their  hold  on  a  civilization  they  are 
grudged  and  denied.  They  do  it  not  for  themselves  only,  but 
for  all  their  race.  Each  educated  colored  man  is  an  ambassador 
to  civilization.  They  know  they  have  a  handicap,  that  they  are 
not  exceptionally  brilliant  or  clever  people.  Yet  every  such  man 
stands,  one  likes  to  think,  aware  of  his  representative  and  vicari 
ous  character,  fighting  against  foul  imaginations,  misrepresenta 
tions,  injustice,  insult  and  naive  unspeakable  meannesses  of 
base  antagonists.  Every  one  of  them  who  keeps  decent  and 
honorable  does  a  little  to  beat  that  opposition  down. 
f— • *  But  the  patience  the  Negro  needs.  He  may  not  even  look 
contempt.  He  must  admit  superiority  in  those  whose  daily 
conduct  to  him  is  the  clearest  evidence  of  moral  inferiority. 
We  sympathetic  whites,  indeed,  may  claim  honor  for  him ;  if  he 
is  wise  he  will  be  silent  under  our  advocacy.  He  must  go  to  and 
fro  self-controlled,  bereft  of  all  the  equalities  that  the  great 
flag  of  America  proclaims — that  flag  for  whose  united  empire  his 
people  fought  and  died,  giving  place  and  precedence  to  the 
strangers  who  pour  in  to  share  its  beneficence,  strangers  ignorant 
even  of  its  tongue.  That  he  must  do — and  wait.  The  Welsh, 
the  Irish,  the  Poles,  the  white  south,  the  indefatigable  Jews 
may  cherish  grievances  and  rail  aloud.  He  must  keep  still. 
They  may  be  hysterical,  revengeful,  threatening,  and  perverse; 
their  wrongs  excuse  them.  For  him  there  is  no  excuse.  And  of 
all  the  races  upon  earth,  which  has  suffered  such  wrongs  as  the 
Negro  blood  that  is  still  imputed  to  him  as  a  sin?  These  people 
who  disdain  him,  who  have  no  sense  of  reparation  toward  him, 
have  sinned  against  him  beyond  all  measure.  .  . 
^  No,  I  can't  help  idealizing  the  dark  submissive  figure  of  the 
Negro  in  the  spectacle  of  America.  He,  too,  seems  to  me  to  sit 
waiting — and  waiting  with  a  marvelous  and  simple-minded 
patience — for  finer  understandings  and  a  nobler  time. 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  127 


HOSTILITY  TOWARD  THE  NEGRO  l 

No  language  is  sufficiently  caustic,  bitter  and  severe,  to  express 
the  disgust,  hatred  and  scorn  which  Southern  gentlemen  feel 
for  what  is  called  the  "New  Issue,"  which,  being  interpreted, 
means,  Negroes  who  aspire  to  knowledge  and  culture,  and  who 
have  acquired  a  taste  for  the  highest  and  best  things  in  life. 
At  the  door  of  this  "New  Issue,"  the  sins  and  shortcomings  of 
the  whole  race  are  laid.  This  "New  Issue,"  is  beyond  hope  of 
redemption,  we  are  told,  because  somebody,  nobody  knows  who, 
has  taught  it  to  believe  in  social  equality,  something,  nobody 
knows  what.  The  alleged  fear  of  social  equality  has  always 
been  used  by  the  South  to  explain  its  unchristian  treatment  of 
the  Negro  and  to  excuse  its  many  crimes.  How  many  crimes 
have  been  committed,  and  how  many  falsehoods  have  been 
uttered,  in  the  name  of  social  equality  by  the  South!  Of  all 
these,  the  greatest  is  the  determination  to  lay  lynching  at  its 
door. 

The  hostility  which  has  always  existed  between  the  poor  whites 
and  the  Negroes,  of  the  South  has  been  greatly  intensified  in  these 
latter  days,  by  the  material  and  intellectual  advancement  of  the 
Negro.  The  wrath  of  a  Spanish  bull,  before  whose  maddened 
eyes  a  red  flag  is  flaunted,  is  but  a  feeble  attempt  at  temper 
compared  with  the  seething,  boiling  rage  of  the  average  white 
man  in  the  South  who  beholds  a  well-educated  Negro  dressed  in 
fine  or  becoming  clothes.  In  the  second  place,  lynching  cannot 
be  suppressed  in  the  South  until  all  classes  of  white  people  who 
dwell  there,  those  of  high  as  well  as  middle  and  low  degree, 
respect  the  rights  of  other  human  beings,  no  matter  what  may 
be  the  color  of  their  skin,  become  merciful  and  just  enough  to 
cease  their  persecution  of  a  weaker  race  and  learn  a  holy 
reverence  for  the  law. 

x-^lt  is  not  because  the  American  people  are  cruel,  as  a  whole, 

|  or    indifferent    on    general    principles    to    the    suffering    of    the 

wronged  or  oppressed,  that  outrages  against  the  Negro  are  per- 

\  mitted  to  occur  and  go  unpunished,  but  because  many  are  ignorant 

1  of  the   extent  to  which  they  are  carried,   while  others   despair 

\  *  From  article,  Lynching,  from  a  Negro's  Point  of  View,  by  Mary 
Church  Terrell,  Honorary  President  of  the  National  Association  of  Col 
ored  Women.  North  American  Review.  178:853-62.  June,  1904. 


128  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

of  eradicating  them 3  The  South  has  so  industriously,  persistently 
and  eloquently  Npftfached  the  inferiority  of  the  Negro,  that  the 
North  has  apparently  been  converted  to  this  view — the  thousands 
of  Negroes  of  sterling  qualities,  moral  worth  and  lofty  patriotism 
to  the  contrary  notwithstanding.  The  South  has  insisted  so 
continuously  and  belligerently  that  it  is  the  Negro's  best  friend, 
that  it  understands  him  better  than  any  other  people  on  the  face 
of  the  earth  and  that  it  will  brook  interference  from  nobody 
in  its  method  of  dealing  with  him,  that  the  North  has  been 
persuaded  or  intimidated  into  bowing  to  this  decree. 


IN  TERMS  OF  HUMANITY  1 

I  would  not  appear  to  overlook  the  existence  of  race  con 
sciousness  and  of  race  prejudice,  nor  to  blink  at  the  fact  that  the 
latter  gravely  complicates  our  portion  of  the  world  problems  of 
the  unprivileged.  Yet  race  prejudice,  though  necessarily  local 
in  its  manifestations,  cannot  be  charged  upon  the  South  alone: 
it  is  as  wide  as  humanity,  and  as  old  as  time.  It  is  not  confined, 
in  the  South,  to  either  race.  A  thing  so  widespread,  so  deeply 
human,  so  common  to  all  races,  should  move  no  man  to  bitter 
ness,  but  to  patience.  And  we  are  not  denied  the  hope  that 
humanity  will  one  day  rise  above  it. 

Race  consciousness  is  another  matter.  In  every  highly 
developed  branch  of  the  great  human  race-stocks  there  exists 
a  desire  for  the  integrity  of  that  stock,  an  instinct  against 
amalgamation  writh  any  very  distantly  related  race.  It  is  true 
that  with  the  majority  of  any  such  people  the  instinct  shows 
itself  chiefly  as  race-antagonism  and  race-prejudice;  yet  it  is 
shared  by  those  who  are  free  from  these  lower  manifestations 
of  it.  Despite  individual  exceptions  this  law  holds  good,  the 
world  around ;  and  its  violation,  in  the  marriage  of  individuals 
of  widely-different  race-stocks,  involves  disastrous  penalties. 

An  instinct  so  widespread  and  so  deep  may  be  safely  credited 
to  some  underlying  cause  in  full  harmony  with  the  great  laws 
of  human  development.  The  instinct  for  racial  integrity,  with 
its  corollary  of  separate  social  life,  will  doubtless  persist  in  a 
world  from  which  race  prejudice  has  vanished.  If  one  believed 

1  From  In  Black  and  White,  by  L.  H.  Hammond,  p.  42-5.  Copy 
right  by  Fleming  H.  Revell  Company.  New  York,  1914. 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  129 

in  an  Ultimate  Race  which  would1  be  a  blend  of  all  races — a 
belief  frequently  adopted  when  one  recognizes  the  real  oneness 
of  humanity — one  would  necessarily  regard  this  desire  for  racial 
integrity  as  but  another  manifestation  of  race  prejudice,  doomed, 
as  such,  to  pass.  But  the  wider  and  deeper  one's  association 
with  life  the  more  clearly  seen  is  the  law  of  differentiation  in  all 
development.  In  the  light  of  this  law  the  ultimate  physical 
oneness  of  human  races  becomes  as  chimerical  as  the  ultimate 
oneness  of  all  species  of  trees,  or  the  disappearance  of  the  rich 
diversity  of  winged  forms  of  life  in  favour  of  an  Ultimate 
Bird. 

Life  does  not  develop  toward  uniformity,  but  toward  rich 
ness  of  variety  in  a  unity  of  beauty  and  service.  Unless  the 
Race  of  Man  contradicts  all  known  laws  of  life  it  will  develop 
in  the  same  way,  and  whether  white,  or  yellow,  or  black,  they 
who  guard  their  own  racial  integrity,  in  a  spirit  of  brotherhood 
free  from  all  other-racial  scorn,  will  most  truly  serve  the  Race 
to  which  all  belong.  What  we  white  people  need  to  lay  aside  is 
not  our  care  for  racial  separateness,  but  our  prejudice.  The 
black  race  needs,  in  aspiring  to  the  fullest  terms  of  possible 
development,  to  foster  a  fuller  faith  in  its  own  blood,  and  in  the 
world's  need  for  some  service  which  it  and  it  alone,  can  render 
in  richest  measure  to  the  great  Brotherhood  of  Man. 


TRAGEDY  OF  THE  MULATTO1 

I  had  not  been  long  engaged  in  the  study  of  the  race  problem 
when  I  found  myself  face  to  face  with  a  curious  and  seemingly 
absurd  question:  "What  is  a  Negro?" 

I  saw  plenty  of  men  and  women  who  were  unquestionably 
Negroes,  Negroes  in  every  physical  characteristic,  black  of 
countenance  with  thick  lips  and  kinky  hair,  but  I  also  met  men 
and  women  as  white  as  I  am  whose  assertion  that  they  were 
really  Negroes  I  accepted  in  defiance  of  the  evidence  of  my  own 
senses.  I  have  seen  blue-eyed  Negroes  and  golden-haired 
Negroes ;  one  Negro  girl  I  met  had  an  abundance  of  soft  straight 
red  hair.  I  have  seen  Negroes  I  could  not  easily  distinguish 
from  the  Jewish  or  French  types;  I  once  talked  with  a  man  I 

1  From  article  by  Ray  Stannard  Baker.  American  Magazine.  65:582-98. 
April,  1908. 


130  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

took  at  first  to  be  a  Chinaman  but  who  told  me  he  was  a  Negro. 
And  I  have  met  several  people,  passing  everywhere  for  white, 
who,  I  knew,  had  Negro  blood. 

Nothing,  indeed,  is  more  difficult  to  define  than  this  curious 
physical  color  line  in  the  individual  human  being.  Legislatures 
have  repeatedly  attempted  to  define  where  black  leaves  off  and 
white  begins,  especially  in  connection  with  laws  prohibiting 
marriage  between  the  races.  Some  of  the  statutes  define  a 
Negro  as  a  "person  with  one-eighth  or  more  of  Negro  blood." 
Southern  people,  who  take  pride  in  their  ability  to  distinguish 
the  drop  of  dark  blood  in  the  white  face,  are  themselves  fre 
quently  deceived.  Several  times  I  have  heard  police  judges  in 
the  South  ask  concerning  a  man  brought  before  them : 

"Is  that  man  colored  or  white?" 

Few  people  realize  how  large  a  proportion  of  the  so-called 
Negro  race  in  this  country  is  not  really  Negro  at  all,  but 
Mulatto  or  mixed  blood,  either  half  white,  or  quadroon,  or 
octoroon,  or  some  other  combination.  In  the  last  census  (1900) 
the  government  gave  up  the  attempt  in  discouragement  of  trying 
to  enumerate  the  Mulattoes  at  all,  and  counted  all  persons  as 
Negroes  who  were  so  classed  in  the  communities  where  they 
resided.  The  census  of  1870  showed  that  one-eighth  (roughly) 
of  the  Negro  population  was  Mulatto,  that  of  1890  showed  that 
the  proportion  had  increased  to  more  than  one-seventh.  But 
these  statistics  are  confessedly  inaccurate:  the  census  report 
itself  says: 

"These  figures  are  of  little  value.  Indeed,  as  an  indication 
of  the  extent  to  which  the  races  have  mingled,  they  are  mis 
leading." 

From  my  own  observation,  and  from  talking  and  cor 
responding  with  many  men  who  have  had  superior  opportunities 
for  investigation,  I  think  it  safe  to  say  that  between  one-fourth 
and  one-third  of  the  Negroes  in  this  country  at  the  present 
time  have  a  visible  admixture  of  white  blood.  At  least  the 
proportion  is  greater  than  the  census  figures  of  1870  and  1890 
would  indicate.  It  is  probable  that  3,000,000  persons  out  of  the 
10,000,000  population  are  visible  Mulattoes.  It  will  be  seen,  then, 
how  very  important  a  matter  it  is,  in  any  careful  survey  of  the 
race  problem,  to  consider  the  influence  of  the  mixed  blood.  In 
the  North,  indeed,  the  race  problem  may  almost  be  called  a 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  131 

Mulatto  problem  rather  than  a  Negro  problem,  for  in  not  a  few 
places  the  mixed  bloods  are  in  excess  of  the  darker  types. 

Many  Mulattoes  have  a  mixed  ancestry  reaching  back  to  the 
beginning  of  civilization  in  North  America;  for  the  Negro 
slave  appeared  practically  as  soon  as  the  white  colonist.  Many 
Negroes  mixed  (and  are  still  mixing  in  Oklahoma)  with  the 
Indians,  and  one  is  today  often  astonished  to  see  distinct  Indian 
types  among  them.  I  shall  never  forget  a  woman  I  saw  in 
Georgia — as  perfect  of  line  as  any  Greek  statue — erect,  lithe, 
strong,  with  sleek  straight  hair,  the  high  cheek-bones  of  the 
Indian,  but  the  lips  of  the  Negro.  She  was  plainly  an  Indian 
type — but  had  no  memory  of  anything  but  Negro  ancestry. 
A  strain  of  Arab  blood  from  Africa  runs  in  the  veins  of  many 
Negroes,  in  others  flows  the  blood  of  the  Portuguese  slavers  or 
of  the  early  Spanish  adventurers  or  of  the  French  who  settled 
in  New  Orleans,  to  say  nothing  of  every  sort  of  American 
white  blood.  In  my  classification  I  have  estimated  3,000,000 
persons  who  are  "visibly"  Mulattoes:  the  actual  number  who 
have  some  strain  of  blood — Arab,  Portuguese,  Spanish,  French, 
Indian — other  than  Negro,  must  be  considerably  larger. 

All  these  strange-blooded  people  are  classed  roughly  together 
as  Negroes.  I  remember  sitting  once  on  the  platform  at  a  great 
meeting  at  the  People's  Tabernacle  in  Atlanta.  An  audience  of 
some  1,200  colored  people  were  present.  A  prominent  white  man 
gave  a  brief  address  in  which  he  urged  the  Negroes  present  to 
accept  with  humility  the  limitations  imposed  upon  them  by  their 
heredity,  that  they  were  Negroes  and  that  therefore  they  should 
accept  with  grace  the  place  of  inferiority.  Now  as  I  looked  out 
over  that  audience,  which  included  the  Best  class  of  colored 
people  in  Atlanta,  I  could  not  help  asking  myself: 

What  is  this  blood  he  is  appealing  to,  anyway? 

For  I  saw  comparatively  few  men  and  women  who  could 
really  be  called  Negroes  at  all.  Some  were  so  light  as  to  be 
indistinguishable  from  Caucasians.  A  bishop  of  the  African 
Methodist  Episcopal  Church  who  sat  near  me  on  the  platform 
was  a  nephew  of  Robert  Toombs,  one  of  the  great  men  of  the 
South,  a  leader  of  the  Confederacy.  Another  man  present  was 
a  grandson  of  a  famous  senator  of  South  Carolina.  Several 
\  others  that  I  knew  of  were  half  brothers  or  sisters  or  cousins  of 
lore  or  less  well-known  white  men.  And  I  could  not  hear  this 


132  SELECTED  ARTICLES 

appeal  to  heredity  without  thinking  of  the  not  at  all  humble 
Southern  blood  which  flowed  in  the  veins  of  some  of  these  men 
and  women.  How  futile  such  advice  really  was,  and  how  little 
it  got  into  the  hearts  of  the  audience,  was  forcibly  impressed 
on  me  afterwards  by  the  remark  of  a  Mulatto  I  met. 

"They've  given  us  their  blood,  whether  we  wanted  it  or  not," 
he  said,  "and  now  they  ask  us  not  to  respond  to  the  same 
ambitions  and  hopes  that  they  have.  They  have  given  us  fighting 
blood  and  expect  us  not  to  struggle." 

With  the  Emancipation  Proclamation  the  aristocratic  "free 
person  of  color"  who  had  formed  a  sort  of  third  class  as  between 
the  white  above  and  the  black  below,  lost  his  unique  position: 
the  line  was  drawn  against  him.  When  I  went  South  I  expected 
to  find  a  good  deal  of  aloofness  between  the  Mulatto  and  the 
black  man.  It  does  exist,  but  really  less  today  in  the  South 
than  in  Boston!  The  prejudice  of  white  people  has  forced  all 
colored  people,  light  or  dark,  together,  and  has  awakened  in 
many  ostracised  men  and  women  who  are  nearly  white  a  spirit 
which  expresses  itself  in  the  passionate  defense  of  everything 
that  is  Negro. 

And  yet,  with  what  pathos!  What  is  this  race?  The  spirit 
and  the  ideals  are  not  Negro :  for  the  people  are  not  Negro, 
even  the  darkest  of  them,  in  the  sense  that  the  inhabitants  of 
the  jungles  of  Africa  are  Negroes.  The  blackest  of  black 
American  Negroes  is  far  ahead  of  his  naked  cousin  in  Africa. 
But  neither  are  they  white! 

Give  a  colored  man  or  woman  white  blood,  educate  him 
until  he  has  glimpses  of  the  greater  possibilities  of  life  and 
then  lock  him  forever  within  the  bars  of  color,  and  you  have 
all  the  elements  of  tragedy.  Dr.  DuBois  in  his  remarkable 
book,  "The  Souls  of  Black  Folk,"  has  expressed  more  vividly 
than  any  other  writer  the  essential  significance  of  this  tragedy. 
I  read  the  book  before  I  went  South  and  I  thought  it  certainly 
overdrawn,  the  expression  of  a  highly  cultivated  and  exceptional 
Mulatto,  but  after  meeting  many  Negroes  I  have  been  surprised 
to  find  how  truly  it  voices  a  wide  experience. 

If  space  permitted  I  could  tell  many  stories  illustrative  of 
the  daily  tragedy  which  many  Mulattoes  are  meeting  in  this 
country,  struggles  that  are  none  the  less  tragic  for  being 
inarticulate.  Here  is  a  letter  which  I  received  not  long  ago 
from  a  Mulatto  professor  in  a  Western  Negro  college: 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  133 

"I  wonder  how  you  will  treat  that  point  to  which  you  have 
thus  far  only  referred  in  your  articles,  'Where  does  the  color  line 
really  begin?'  What  is  to  become  of  that  large  class  of  which 
I  am  a  part,  that  class  which  is  neither  white  nor  black  and  yet 
both?  There  are  millions  of  us  who  have  the  blood  of  both 
races,  and,  if  heredity  means  anything,  who  have  the  traditions, 
feelings  and  passions  of  both.  Yet  we  are  black  in  name,  in  law, 
in  station,  in  everything  save  face  and  figure,  despite  the  over 
whelming  white  blood.  And  why?  Certainly  not  because  we 
have  to  be.  America  is  a  big  country:  it  is  easy  to  get  lost,  even  • 
in  a  neighboring  state.  Some  of  us  do,  and  the  process  has 
been  going  on  so  long  in  certain  large  cities  of  the  North  that 
we  cease  to  think  about  it.  But  the  majority  of  us  stay  and 
live  and  work  out  our  destiny  among  the  people  into  whom  we 
were  born,  living  oft-times  side  by  side  with  our  white  brothers 
and  sisters.  When  I  go  back  to  Atlanta  after  an  absence  of 
two  years,  I  can,  if  I  wish,  go  back  in  a  Pullman,  go  out  of  the 
main  entrance  of  the  station,  get  my  dinner  at  the  Piedmont 
Hotel,  and  when  I  am  tired1  of  being  Mr.  Hyde,  I  can  stroll  down 
Auburn  Avenue  with  my  friends  in  the  full  glory  of  Dr.  Jekyll. 
As  a  matter  of  fact  I  shall  doubtless  avail  myself  of  the  privi 
lege  of  a  sleeper,  sneak  out  the  side  entrance,  get  on  the  last 
seat  of  the  car,  despite  the  conductor's  remonstrance,  go  on  to  my 
friends  at  once  and  be  myself  all  the  time  I  am  there.  I  wouldn't 
be  a  white  man  if  I  had  to.  I  want  to  be  black.  I  want  to  love 
those  who  love  me.  I  want  to  help  those  who  need  my  help. 
And  I  know  hundreds  just  like  me:  I  know  others  who  are  not. 

"I  wonder  if  you  can  decide:  'Where  does  the  color  line 
really — end?' " 

I  don't  know  how  many  times  I  have  heard  Mulattoes  speak 
of  the  French  novelist  Dumas  as  having  Negro  blood,  and  they 
also  claim  Robert  Browning  and  Alexander  Hamilton  (how 
truly  I  do  not  know).  But  the  cases  which  interest  them  most 
are  those  in  this  country;  and  there  must  be  far  more  of  them 
than  white  people  imagine.  I  know  of  scores  of  them.  A  well- 
known  white  actress,  whose  name,  of  course,  I  cannot  give,  when 
she  goes  to  Boston,  secretly  visits  her  colored  relatives.  A  New 
York  man  who  holds  a  prominent  political  appointment  under  the 
state  government  and  who  has  become  an  authority  in  his  line, 


134  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

is  a  Negro.  Not  long  ago  he  entered  a  hotel  in  Baltimore  and 
the  Negro  porter  who  ran  to  take  his  bag  said  discreetly: 

"Hello,  Bob." 

As  boys  they  had  gone  to  the  same  Negro  school. 

"Let  me  carry  your  bag,"  said  the  porter,  "I  won't  give  you 
away." 

In  Philadelphia  there  lives  a  colored  woman  who  married 
a  rich  white  man.  Of  course,  no  white  people  know  she  is 
colored,  but  the  Negroes  do,  and  do  not  tell.  Occasionally  she 
drives  down  to  a  certain  store,  dismisses  her  carriage  and  walks 
on  foot  to  the  home  of  her  mother  and  sisters. 

Some  Mulattoes  I  know  of,  one  a  prominent  Wall  street 
broker,  have  "crossed  the  line"  by  declaring  that  they  are 
Mexicans,  Brazilians,  Spanish  or  French;  one  says  he  is  an 
Armenian.  Under  a  foreign  name  they  are  readily  accepted 
among  white  people  where,  as  Negroes,  they  would  be  instantly 
rejected.  No  one,  of  course,  can  estimate  the  number  of  men 
and  women  with  Negro  blood  who  have  thus  "gone  over  to 
white" ;  but  it  must  be  large. 

One  of  the  first  questions  that  always  arises  concerning  the 
Mulatto  is  whether  or  not  the  mixture  of  blood  still  continues 
and  whether  it  is  increasing  or  decreasing.  In  other  words, 
is  the  amalgamation  of  the  races  still  going  on  and  to  what 
extent  ? 

Intermarriage  between  the  races  is  forbidden  by  law  in  all 
the  Southern  states  and  also  in  the  following  Northern  and 
Western  states :  Arizona,  California,  Colorado,  Delaware,  Idaho, 
Indiana,  Missouri,  Nebraska,  Oklahoma,  Oregon  and  Utah.  In 
all  other  Northern  and  Western  states  marriage  between  the 
races  is  lawful. 

And  yet,  the  marriage  laws,  so  far  as  they  affect  the  actual 
problem  of  amalgamation,  mean  next  to  nothing  at  all.  No 
legal  marriage  existed  between  the  races  in  slavery  times  and 
yet  there  was  a  widespread  mixture  of  blood.  The  great  body 
of  Mulattoes  now  in  the  country  trace  their  origin  to  such 
relationships. 

So  much  for  Southern  conditions.  How  is  it  in  the  North 
where  intermarriage  is  not  forbidden  by  law? 

I  have  made  a  careful  investigation  of  the  facts  in  several 
Northern  cities,  and  I  have  been  surprised  to  discover  how  little 
intermarriage  there  really  is. 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  135 

If  intermarriage  in  the  North  were  increasing  largely, 
Boston,  being  the  city  where  the  least  race  prejudice  exists  and 
where  the  proportion  of  Mulattoes  is  largest,  would  show  it 
most  plainly.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  in  the  year  1902,  when, 
according  to  Senator  Money,  2,000  white  women  married  colored 
men,  there  were  in  Boston,  which  contains  the  great  bulk  of  the 
Negro  population  of  Massachusetts,  just  29  interracial  marriages. 

The  white  woman  who  marries  a  Negro  is  speedily  declassed : 
she  is  ostracised  by  the  white  people,  and  while  she  finds  a 
certain  place  among  the  Negroes,  she  is  not  even  readily  ac 
cepted  as  a  Negro.  In  short,  she  is  cut  off  from  both  races. 
For  this  reason,  although  there  are  no  laws  in  most  Northern 
states  against  mixed  marriages,  and  although  the  Negro  popula 
tion  has  been  increasing,  the  number  of  intermarriages  is  not 
only  not  increasing,  but  in  many  cities,  as  in  Boston,  it  is 
decreasing.  It  is  an  unpopular  institution! 


BRAZIL  AND  THE  NEGRO1 

If  I  were  asked  to  name  the  one  point  in  which  there  is 
complete  difference  between  the  Brazilians  and  ourselves,  I 
should  say  that  it  was  in  the  attitude  toward  the  black  man. 
As  the  Indian  becomes  civilized  he  is  absorbed  into  the  popula 
tion,  as  is  the  case  with  us  in  Oklahoma,  and  whoever  has 
Indian  blood  in  him  is  proud  of  the  fact.  The  President  of 
Brazil  is  one  of  these  men,  and  there  are  a  number  of  others 
among  the  leaders  whom  I  met.  It  is  an  entire  mistake  to  speak 
as  if  the  population  of  Brazil  were  so  mixed  as  to  be  wholly 
unlike  that  of  Europe  or  the  United  States.  It  is  mixed  only 
in  the  sense  in  which  the  populations  of  Italy  and  Spain,  as  the 
population  of  southern  France  is  mixed,  as  the  population  is 
mixed  in  many  parts  of  the  United  States.  As  regards  the 
major  part  of  the  population,  "mixed  race"  is  such  only  in  the 
sense  in  which  that  is  also  true  of  the  United  States,  and  of  most 
of  the  advanced  nations  of  mankind.  There  is  one  real  differ 
ence,  however.  This  difference  between  the  United  States  and 
Brazil  is  the  tendency  of  Brazil  to  absorb  the  Negro.  My  obser 
vation  leads  me  to  believe  that  in  "absorb"  I  have  used  exactly 

1  By  Theodore   Roosevelt.     Outlook.     106:409-11.     February  21,    1914. 


136  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

the  right  expression  to  describe  this  process.  It  is  the  Negro 
who  is  being  absorbed  and  not  the  Negro  who  is  absorbing  the 
white  man.  The  great  majority  of  the  men  and  women  of  high 
social  position  in  Rio  are  of  as  unmixed  white  blood  as  the 
corresponding  class  in  Paris  or  Madrid  or  Rome.  The  great 
majority  of  the  political  leaders  are  pure  whites,  with  an  occa 
sional  dash  of  Indian  blood.  But  any  Negro  or  mulatto  who 
shows  himself  fit  is  without  question  given  the  place  to  which 
his  abilities  entitle  him.  I  met  one  or  two  colored  Deputies. 
At  one  military  school  I  met  a  Negro  professor.  At  one  great 
laboratory  I  saw  a  colored  doctor.  All  of  these  men  were 
accepted  quite  simply  on  their  worth,  and  apparently  nobody  had 
any  idea  of  discriminating  against  them  in  any  official  or  busi 
ness  relations  because  of  their  color.  A  very  great  majority  of 
the  Negroes,  and  most  of  the  colored  people — that  is,  the  mulat- 
toes  and  quadroons — do  not  make  their  way  up  to  the  highest 
positions,  and  they  are  proportionately  most  plentiful  in  the 
lower  ranks.  Among  the  working  people,  for  instance,  and 
among  the  enlisted  men  of  the  army  and  navy,  I  saw  many 
Negroes,  many  colored  men,  working  side  by  side  in  the  same 
organizations  with  the  whites,  and  apparently  without  any  dis 
crimination  being  made  against  them.  In  Bahia  there  is  a  very 
large  Negro  element  among  the  working  class.  In  parts  of 
Brazil  it  is  somewhat  larger.  In  Rio  it  is  noticeable,  but  far  less 
so  than  in  most  of  the  cities  of  the  Southern  United  States. 

Brazil  is  most  fortunate  in  the  fact  that  its  white  working 
population  has  nothing  of  the  parasite  about  it.  The  whites 
do  not  endeavor  to  live  on  the  labor  of  the  blacks,  the  inevitable 
result  of  which,  as  shown  in  all  other  communities,  is  that 
ultimately  the  blacks  crowd  out  of  existence  those  who  live  on 
their  labor.  On  the  contrary,  the  bulk  of  the  work,  even  in 
Rio,  is  done  by  white  men.  But  these  white  men  draw  no  line 
against  the  Negro,  and  in  the  lower  ranks  intermarriages  are 
frequent,  especially  between  the  Negroes  and  the  most  numerous 
of  the  immigrant  races  of  Europe.  In  the  middle  class  these 
intermarriages  are  rare,  and  in  the  higher  class  almost  unknown 
so  far  as  concerns  men  and  women  in  which  the  black  strain  is 
at  all  evident.  But  even  in  the  higher  ranks  there  is  apparently 
no  prejudice  whatever  against  marrying  a  man  or  girl  who  is, 
say,  seven-eighths  white,  the  remaining  quantity  of  black  blood 
being  treated  as  a  negligible  element  The  men  and  women  with 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  137 

whom  I  closely  associated  were  in  the  very  great  majority  of 
cases  pure  white,  save  in  the  comparatively  rare  instances  where 
they  had  a  dash  of  Indian  blood.  But  they  naturally  and  uncon 
cernedly  told  me  the  facts  as  I  have  above  related  them. 

Perhaps  the  attitude  that  the  Brazilians,  including  the  most 
intelligent  among  them,  take  is  best  symbolized  by  a  picture  we 
saw  in  the  art  museum  of  Rio.  It  portrayed  a  black  grand 
father,  a  mulatto  son,  and  white  grandchild,  the  evident  intention 
of  the  painter  being  to  express  both  the  hope  and  the  belief 
that  the  Negro  was  being  absorbed  and  transformed  so  that  he 
would  become  a  white  man.  It  is  idle  to  prophecy  for  any  remote 
future,  and  it  is  a  very  doubtful  thing  to  prophecy  even  about  the 
immediate  future,  but  my  impression  is  that  the  guiding  or 
ruling  classes  of  Brazil  will  continue  to  be  almost  absolutely 
white,  that  in  the  classes  immediately  below  them  there  will 
continue  to  be  a  certain  absorption  of  Negro  blood  and  that 
among  the  ordinary  people  this  absorption  will  be  larger — large 
enough  to  make  a  slight  difference  in  the  type. 

From  the  above  it  will  be  seen  that  the  ideals  of  the  United 
States  and  of  Brazil  as  regards  the  treatment  of  the  Negroes 
are  wholly  different.  The  best  men  in  the  United  States  not 
only  among  the  whites  but  among  the  blacks  also,  believe  in 
the  complete  separation  of  the  races  so  far  as  marriage  is  con 
cerned,  while  they  also  believe  in  treating  each  man  of  whatever 
color  absolutely  on  his  worth  as  a  man,  allowing  him  full 
opportunity  to  achieve  the  success  warranted  by  his  ability  and 
integrity,  and  giving  to  him  the  full  measure  of  respect  to 
which  that  success  entitles  him.  In  Brazil,  on  the  contrary,  the 
idea  looked  forward  to  is  the  disappearance  of  the  Negro  ques 
tion  through  the  disappearance  of  the  Negro  himself — that  is, 
through  his  gradual  absorption  into  the  white  race. 

This  does  not  mean  that  Brazilians  are  or  will  become  the 
"mongrel"  people  that  they  have  been  asserted  to  be  by  certain 
writers,  not  only  French  and  English,  but  American.  The 
Brazilians  are  a  white  people,  belonging  to  the  Mediterranean 
race,  and  differing  from  the  Northern  stocks  only  as  such  great 
and  civilized  old  races  as  the  Spaniards  and  Italians,  with  their 
splendid  historic  past,  differ  from  these  northern  stocks.  The 
evident  Indian  admixture  had  added  a  good,  and  not  a  bad, 
element.  The  very  large  European  immigration  of  itself  tends, 
decade  by  decade,  to  make  the  Negro  blood  a  smaller  element 


138  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

of  the  blood  of  the  whole  community.  The  Brazilian  of  the 
future  will  be  in  blood  more  European  than  in  the  past  and  he 
will  differ  in  culture  only  as  the  American  of  the  North  differs. 

The  great  majority  of  the  men  and  women  I  met,  the  leaders 
in  the  world  of  political  and  industrial  effort  and  of  scientific 
accomplishment,  showed  little,  if  any,  more  trace  of  Negro 
blood  than  would  be  shown  by  the  like  number  of  similar  men 
in  a  European  capital.  Yet  not  only  is  there  in  some  classes 
a  considerable  infiltration  of  Negro  blood  with  a  corresponding 
tendency  of  the  pure  Negro  type  to  disappear,  but  this  process 
is  regarded  with  hearty  approval  by  the  most  thoughtful  states 
men  of  the  country.  Their  view,  so  different  from  our  own, 
can  perhaps  best  be  expressed  in  the  words  of  one  of  these 
very  statesmen,  himself  of  pure  white  blood,  who  said  to  me 
substantially : 

"Of  course  the  presence  of  the  Negro  is  the  real  problem, 
and  a  very  serious  problem,  both  in  your  country,  the  United 
States  and  in  mine,  Brazil.  Slavery  was  an  intolerable  method 
of  solving  the  problem  and  had  to  be  abolished.  But  the  prob 
lem  itself  remained,  in  the  presence  of  the  Negro.  It  was  not 
the  slave-owner  who  inherited  his  slaves  who  was  responsible 
for  the  problem.  The  slave-trader  who  brought  the  slaves  into 
the  country  was  the  man  who  inflicted  the  ghastly  wrong,  not 
only  upon  the  blacks  but  upon  the  whites.  We,  like  you,  have 
merely  inherited  the  problem. 

"Now  comes  the  necessity  to  devise  some  method  of  dealing 
with  it.  You  of  the  United  States  are  keeping  the  blacks  as 
an  entirely  separate  element,  and  you  are  not  treating  them  in 
a  way  that  fosters  their  self-respect.  They  will  remain  a 
menacing  element  in  your  civilization,  permanent,  and  perhaps 
even,  after  a  while,  a  growing  element.  With  us  the  question 
tends  to  disappear,  because  the  blacks  themselves  tend  to  dis 
appear  and  become  absorbed.  You  speak  of  Brazil  as  having 
a  large  Negro  population.  Well,  in  a  century  there  will  not  be 
any  Negroes  in  Brazil,  whereas  you  will  have  twenty  or  thirty 
millions  of  them.  Then  for  you  there  will  be  a  real  and  very 
uncomfortable  problem,  while  for  us  the  problem  in  its  most 
menacing  phase  will  have  disappeared.  You  say  that  this  result 
will  be  accomplished  only  by  an  adulteration,  and  therefore  a 
weakening,  of  the  pure  white  blood.  I  grant  that  this  will  have 
happened  as  regards  a  portion,  perhaps  a  third,  of  our  population, 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  139 

I  regret  this,  but  it  is  the  least  objectionable  of  the  alternatives. 
We  treat  the  Negro  with  entire  respect,  and  he  responds  to  the 
treatment.  If  a  Negro  shows  capacity  and  integrity,  he  receives 
the  same  reward  that  a  white  man  would  receive.  He  has 
therefore  every  incentive  to  rise.  In  the  upper  ranks  of  society 
there  is  no  intermarriage  with  the  Negro  of  pure  or  nearly  pure 
blood;  but  such  intermarriage  is  frequent  in  the  lower  ranks, 
especially  between  the  Negro  and  many  classes  of  immigrants. 

"The  pure  Negro  is  constantly  growing  less  and  less  in 
numbers,  and  after  two  or  more  crosses  of  the  white  blood  the 
Negro  blood  tends  to  disappear  so  far  as  the  physical,  mental, 
and  moral  traits  of  the  race  are  concerned.  When  he  has 
disappeared  his  blood  will  remain  as  an  appreciable,  but  in  no 
/way  a  dominant,  element  in  perhaps  a  third  of  our  people,  while 
the  remaining  two-thirds  will  be  pure  whites.  Granted  that 
this  strain  will  represent  a  slight  weakening  in  one-third  of 
our  population,  the  result  will  be  that  in  our  country  two-thirds 
of  the  population  will  have  kept  its  full  strength,  with  one-third 
slightly  weakened,  while  the  Negro  problem  will  have  entirely 
disappeared.  In  your  country  all  the  white  population  will  have 
been  kept  in  its  original  race  strength,  but  the  Negro  will 
remain  in  increased  numbers  and  an  increased  and  bitter  sense 
of  his  isolation  so  that  the  problem  of  his  presence  will  be  more 
menacing  than  at  present.  I  do  not  say  that  ours  is  a  perfect 
solution,  but  I  regard  it  as  a  better  solution  than  yours.  We 
and  you  have  to  face  two  alternatives,  neither  of  them  without 
drawbacks.  I  believe  that  the  one  we  Brazilians  have  chosen 
will  in  the  long  run,  from  the  national  standpoint,  prove  less 
disadvantageous  and  dangerous  than  the  one  you  of  the  United 
States  have  chosen." 


VIOLENCE 
LYNCHING,  RACE  RIOTS  AND  PEONAGE 

LYNCHING  RECORD  FOR  1920 1 

According  to  the  records  compiled  by  Monroe  N.  Work,  of 
the  Department  of  Records  and  Research  of  the  Tuskegee  In 
stitute,  there  were  56  instances  in  which  officers  of  the  law 
prevented  lynchings.  Of  these,  10  were  in  Northern  states  and 
46  were  in  Southern  States.  In  42  of  the  cases,  the  prisoners 
were  removed  or  the  guards  were  augmented  or  other  precau 
tions  taken.  In  14  instances  armed  force  was  used  to  repel  the 
would  be  lynchers.  In  4  of  these  instances  the  mobs  were  fired 
upon  and  as  a  result,  7  of  the  attackers  were  killed  and  several 
wounded. 

There  were  61  persons  lynched  in  1920.  Of  these,  52  were 
in  the  South  and  9  in  the  North  and  West.  This  is  22  less 
than  the  number,  83,  for  the  year  1919.  Of  those  lynched  53 
were  Negroes  and  8  were  whites.  One  of  those  put  to  death  was 
a  Negro  woman.  Eighteen,  or  less  than  on-third  of  those  put 
to  death,  were  charged  with  rape  or  attempted  rape.  Three  of 
the  victims  were  burned  to  death.  The  charges  against  those 
burned  to  death  were:,  rape  and  murder,  i;  killing  landlord  in 
a  dispute,  2. 

The  offenses  charged  the  whites  were:  murder,  5;  insulting 
woman,  I ;  no  charge  except  being  a  foreigner,  i ;  killing  officer 
of  the  law,  i.  The  offenses  charged  against  the  Negroes  were: 
murder,  5;  attempted  murder,  4;  killing  officer  of  the  law,  5; 
killing  landlord  in  dispute,  6;  rape,  15;  attempted  rape,  3;  assist 
ing  fugitive  to  escape,  3 ;  wounding  another,  2 ;  insulting  woman, 
2 ;  knocking  down  guard,  escaping  from  chain  gang  and  then 
returning  and  surrendering,  2;  jumping  labor  contract,  i;  threat 
ening  to  kill  man,  i ;  cutting  a  man  in  a  fight,  i ;  for  receiving 
stay  of  death  sentence  because  another  confessed  crime,  i ;  peep 
ing  through  window  at  woman,  I ;  insisting  on  voting,  I. 

1  Letter  issued  by  Tuskegee  Ngrmal  and  Industrial  Institute,  December 
31,  1930, 


142  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

The  states  in  which  lynchings  occurred  and  the  number  in 
each  state  are  as  follows :  Alabama,  7 ;  Arkansas,  I ;  California, 
3 ;  Florida,  7 ;  Georgia,  9 ;  Illinois,  I ;  Kansas,  I ;  Kentucky,  i ; 
Minnesota,  3 ;  Mississippi,  7 ;  Missouri,  I ;  North  Carolina,  3 ; 
Ohio,  i ;  Oklahoma,  3 ;  South  Carolina,  I ;  Texas,  10 ;  Virginia, 
i ;  West  Virginia,  I. 


PRACTICE    OF    LYNCHING    IN    THE    UNITED 
STATES l 

Very  early  in  the  history  of  the  settlement  and  colonization 
of  the  territory  of  the  United  States,  measures  which  were  not 
wholly  legal  in  their  nature  were  occasionally  adopted  in  the 
punishment  of  public  offenders.  During  the  colonial  period,  in 
places  where  the  provincial  governments  were  well  organized, 
Indians  accused  of  murdering  whites  were,  upon  capture,  not 
only  put  to  death  without  any  legal  formality  whatsoever,  but 
were,  even  after  arrest  and  confinement  in  a  perfectly  legal  way, 
sometimes  forcibly  taken  from  the  officers  of  the  law,  and  from 
jails,  and  mercilessly  killed  by  private  citizens.  During  the 
colonial  period,  also,  there  was  recourse  to  the  practice  of  "regu 
lating"  public  offenders  and  public  grievances,  of  inflicting,  semi- 
privately,  corporal  punishment  for  reformatory  or  corrective 
purposes  upon  persons  considered  inimical  to  the  interests  of  the 
community.  In  North  Carolina,  by  means  of  a  more  or  less  for 
mal  organization  of  Regulators,  during  the  years  1765-1771, 
resistance  was  offered  to  what  were  considered  oppressive  exac 
tions  on  the  part  of  the  government  officials.  In  South  Carolina, 
at  about  the  same  time,  in  the  part  remote  from  the  sea-coast, 
a  similar  organization  of  Regulators  attempted,  by  whipping 
and  banishing  the  undesirable  inhabitants,  to  protect  property 
and  preserve  order  until  an  adequate  judiciary  could  be  estab 
lished. 

Throughout  the  period  of  the  Revolutionary  War  conditions 
were  such  as  to  offer  abundant  opportunity  for  the  use  of  extra- 
legal  methods  of  punishment.  There  were  the  usual  unsettled 
conditions  and  the  disorganization  incident  to  a  war.  Further- 

1  By  James  Elbert  Cutler,  Assistant  Professor  of  Economics,  Univer 
sity  of  Michigan,  South  Atlantic  Quarterly.  6:125-34.  April,  1907. 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  143 

more,  in  almost  every  community  there  were  persons  holding 
i  Tory  sentiments  who  frequently  sought,  openly  or  secretly,  to 
hinder  in  every  possible  way  the  successful  outcome  of  the  move 
ment  for  independence.  Tarring  and  feathering,  with  accompany 
ing  indignities,  was  the  characteristic  and  popular  method  of 
dealing  with  customs  informers  and  importers  of  British  goods, 
tea  consignees,  and  Tories  in  general  who,  by  words  or  acts, 
aroused  patriotic  indignation.  At  the  same  time,  summary 
punishment  was  not  infrequently  visited  upon  other  public 
offenders ;  usually  it  was  a  coat  of  tar  and  feathers,  but  often  it 
took  the  form  of  a  whipping,  merely,  followed  by  banishment 
after  a  specified  time.  There  was,  in  addition,  an  occasional 
infliction  of  the  death  penalty  by  these  self-constituted  adminis 
trators  of  law  and  justice  during  the  period  of  the  Revolution. 

When  the  tide  of  emigration  rolled  westward  over  the  Alle- 
ghanies,  after  the  close  of  the  Revolutionary  War,  it  carried  with 
it  the  extra-legal  methods  of  punishment  adopted  during  colonial 
times  and  the  summary  practices  of  the  time  of  the  Revolution; 
and,  amidst  the  dangers  and  vicissitudes  of  frontier  life,  they 
were  revived  and  put  into  use  again  and  again  by  the  pioneers  of 
the  West.  It  is  to  be  remembered,  too,  that  it  was  mainly  against 
white  men  of  desperate  character — highway  robbers,  counter 
feiters,  swindlers,  horse-thieves,  cattle-thieves,  desperadoes — that 
these  summary  proceedings  were  invoked  by  the  emigrants  from 
the  original  colonies  as  they  pushed  the  line  of  the  frontier 
further  and  further  to  the  westward.  Generally,  the  punish 
ments  administered  consisted  of  nothing  more  serious  than  a 
whipping,  or  some  other  form  of  corporal  punishment.  Frequent 
occasion  was  found  on  the  frontier  for  the  use  of  such  methods 
to  curb  the  activity  of  the  lawless  and  the  vicious.  During  the 
colonization  of  the  territory  west  of  the  Mississippi  River,  how 
ever,  more  extreme  measures  were  commonly  taken.  In  the 
fifties,  particularly,  the  punishment  inflicted  by  the  "vigilance" 
organizations  which  were  then  common  in  that  section  of  the 
country  was,  almost  invariably,  death  by  either  hanging  or 
shooting. 

Not  long  after  the  year  1830,  when  the  slavery  controversy 
began  to  stir  up  much  animosity  and  dissension,  popular  suspicion 
was  directed  particularly  against  the  abolitionist.  Since  the 
abolitionist  advocated  the  liberation  of  the  slaves  and  worked 
zealously  toward  that  end,  he  was  declared  to  be  undermining 


144  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

the  right  of  private  property,  to  be  attempting  to  overthrow  the 
established  order  of  society.  This  seemed  to  many  people  ample 
justification  for  summary  punishment.  In  the  slave  states  such 
punishment  was  generally  a  whipping  or  flogging,  which  was 
often  followed  by  tarring  and  feathering,  and  banishment  after  a 
few  hours,  with  a  penalty  of  like  treatment  or  worse  for  non- 
compliance. 

In  cases  of  suspected  conspiracy  for  an  insurrection  among 
the  slaves  the  supposed  leaders  were  often  summarily  punished, 
sometimes  by  the  infliction  of  the  death  penalty.  But  previous  to 
the  abolition  of  slavery  in  the  United  States  comparatively  few 
Negroes  were  put  to  death  in  any  other  than  a  perfectly  legal 
manner.  The  fact  that  the  slaves  were  property,  and  in  that 
capacity  were  amenable  to  the  laws,  made  recourse  to  unlawful 
procedure  against  them  unprofitable,  as  well  as  unnecessary. 
After  the  close  of  the  Civil  War,  however,  when  the  Negroes  had 
ceased  to  be  chattels  and  the  whites  were  threatened  with  Negro 
domination,  summary  methods  were  widely  adopted  against  the 
Negroes.  Indeed,  to  so  great  an  extent  have  extra-legal  methods 
of  punishment  been  followed,  throughout  the  Reconstruction 
Period  and  subsequently,  in  dealing  with  Negroes  accused  of 
crime,  that  the  word  lynching  is  now  associated  in  the  minds  of 
many  people  almost  exclusively  with  the  killing  of  Negroes  in  a 
summary  fashion. 

It  will  be  seen  that  numerous  conditions  and  circumstances 
have  combined  to  breed  in  the  American  people  a  traditional 
inclination  to  disregard,  upon  occasion,  all  the  law  and  legal 
procedure  that  have  been  established.  For  no  considerable 
period  of  time  since  the  early  settlement  of  this  country  can  it  be 
said  that  extra-legal  methods  of  punishing  crime  have  been 
wholly  unknown.  From  colonial  times  down  to  the  present  day, 
in  some  one  or  more  parts  of  the  country,  frontier  conditions  have 
existed  where  the  civil  regulations  were  not  sufficiently  estab 
lished  to  insure  the  prompt  and  effective  punishment  of  public 
offenders.  At  the  same  time,  in  the  older,  better  settled  sections 
of  the  country,  though  the  judiciary  was  well  established  and  the 
apprehension  and  punishment  of  public  offenders  was  well  pro 
vided  for  in  the  law,  circumstances  have  arisen,  time  after  time, 
of  such  a  nature  that  the  regular  and  legal  administration  of 
justice  was  deemed  inadequate  or  defective,  and  was  therefore 
disregarded.  The  resourceful  self-reliant  spirit  necessarily  pos- 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  145 

sessed  by  the  early  settlers  and  the  western  pioneers,  combined 
with  the  turbulent,  rebellious  and  seditions  elements  which  the 
Revolution  set  loose,  have,  under  varying  circumstances,  borne 
fruit  a  hundredfold  throughout  the  subsequent  history  of  the 
growth,  expansion  and  development  of  this  country. 

In  the  last  few  years,  most  of  the  writers  who  have  discussed 
the  lynchings  that  have  occurred,  have  attributed  them  to  race 
prejudice  and  the  uncontrollable  actions  of  crowds  or  mobs.  Not 
all  lynchings  can  be  attributed  to  either  of  these  causes,  however. 
In  the  lynching  of  1,169  whites  during  the  twenty-two  years, 
1882-1903,  no  trace  of  race  prejudice  can  be  discerned.  Neither 
is  it  possible  to  discover  in  the  manner  in  which  many  lynchings 
are  carried  on  any  of  the  characteristics  essentially  belonging  to 
the  psychology  of  the  crowd  or  the  mob.  It  is  true  that  in  numer 
ous  particular  instances  race  prejudice  appears  as  the  most 
prominent  inciting  cause  and  that  in  many  cases,  also,  individ 
uals  seem  to  lose  their  identity  for  the  time  being  in  an  excited 
crowd  where  impulse  controls  rather  than  reason  and  intelli 
gence,  and  men  who  are  ordinarily  law-abiding  citizens  unhesi 
tatingly  disregard  all  that  the  law  guarantees  to  men  accused  of 
crime;  but  an  explanation  along  either  of  these  lines  is  wholly 
inadequate  for  a  proper  understanding  of  the  existence  of  lynch 
ing  as  an  American  practice. 

Neither  can  any  single  crime  be  assigned  as  the  cause  of 
lynchings,  so  that  it  would  be  safe  to  say  that  were  the  crime 
no  longer  committed  lynchings  would  cease.  The  men  and 
women  who  were  lynched  during  the  twenty-two  years,  1882- 
1903 — more  than  3,300  by  actual  count — were  charged,  not  with 
a  single  crime  or  set  of  crimes,  but  with  almost  every  variety 
of  offense  from  most  brutal  and  inhuman  murder  down  to  mere 
obnoxiousness.  Of  the  Negro  men  who  were  lynched  during 
this  period  not  more  than  34  per  cent,  were  lynched  for  the 
crime  of  rape  against  white  women,  and  this  percentage 
includes  all  cases  where  this  crime  was  merely  alleged  to  be 
the  cause  of  the  lynching  as  well  as  all  cases  where  there  was 
unquestioned  evidence  that  this  crime  had  been  attempted  or 
actually  committed  by  the  individual  who  was  lynched. 

It  will  be  found,  if  the  history  of  the  practice  of  lynching  in 
this  country  be  carefully  noted,  that  the  only  contributory  factor 
that  is  always  and  invariably  present  is  an  unorganized  or  dis 
organized  state  of  society,  or  a  condition  of  popular  excitement 


146  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

and  resentment,  when  reliance  on  ordinary  legal  procedure  is 
at  a  minimum.  Lynchings  take  place,  primarily,  because  certain 
of  the  citizens  conceive  that  the  ends  of  justice  and  order  can 
be  better  served  in  that  way  than  by  the  legal  procedure  which 
is  available.  No  punishment  is  given  the  lynchers,  ordinarily, 
for  the  reason  that  a  majority  of  the  rest  of  the  citizens  believe 
that  the  victim  or  victims  suffered  only  what  was  really 
deserved,  and,  while  they  deprecate  the  method  adopted,  it  is 
not  in  accord  with  their  sense  of  justice  to  impose  a  penalty  up 
on  assistance  given  in  the  infliction  of  a  deserved  punishment,  even 
though  the  majesty  of  the  law  and  the  government  has  been 
temporarily  set  at  naught.  That  lynching,  though  it  may  be  the 
infliction  of  a  deserved  punishment,  is  at  the  same  time  and 
must  always  be  a  serious  crime  against  society  and  against  all 
that  a  stable  government  guarantees  its  citizens,  is  commonly 
overlooked  and  practically  disregarded.  What  is  conceived  to 
be  the  badness  of  the  victim  completely  overshadows  the  direct 
violation  of  all  the  standards  of  justice  and  of  punishment  to 
which  civilization  has  given  its  sanction. 

This  failure  on  the  part  of  the  American  people  to  view  the 
practice  of  lynching  in  both,  as  well  as  one,  of  its  important 
aspects  is  peculiarly  significant  when  it  is  coupled  with  a  fact 
long  recognized  by  students  of  political  science.  It  is  precisely 
under  a  democratic  form  of  government,  where  the  people,  either 
directly  or  through  their  representatives,  make  the  laws  and 
then  elect  the  officers  who  are  to  enforce  them,  that  it  is  most 
difficult  to  establish  a  legal  system  capable  of  controlling  popular 
excitements.  A  highly  decentralized  government,  a  government 
that  grants  a  large  degree  of  autonomy  to  its  local  units  and  at 
the  same  time  gives  them  full  representative  power  in  national 
affairs,  is  far  less  effective  in  organizing  and  administering  that 
coercive  force,  that  compulsion  and  overpowering  authority, 
which  is  indispensable  for  insuring  domestic  peace  and  for  which 
there  is  no  substitute  in  the  suppression  of  rioting  and  mob  vio 
lence,  when  unusual  or  exasperating  circumstances  arise.  That 
this  fundamental  principle  of  political  science  should  not  have 
been  more  widely  recognized  by  the  citizens  of  the  United 
States  is  extremely  unfortunate.  It  is  certain  that  too  great 
reliance  has  been  placed  upon  the  freedom  and  self-direction 
of  a  democratic  form  of  government  and  far  too  little  recog 
nition  given  to  the  necessity  of  training  a  vigilant  and  respon- 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  147 

sible  citizenship  which  shall  insist,  upon  all  occasions  and  under 
all  circumstances,  that  the  government — federal,  state,  city, 
county,  town  and  village — be  thoroughly  and  effectively  admin 
istered. 

Administratively,  the  weakness  of  the  government  of  the 
United  States  is  shown  no  more  clearly  than  in  connection  with 
the  inability  of  the  federal  government  to  stamp  out  the  practice 
of  lynching.  During  the  last  twenty  years  the  federal  govern 
ment,  through  its  Department  of  State,  has  paid  to  foreign 
countries  over  $400,000  in  the  form  of  indemnities  for  the 
lynching  of  aliens  in  this  country;  yet  it  cannot  in  the  several 
states  legally  undertake  to  prevent  the  occurrence  of  lynchings, 
nor  can  it  in  any  way  hold  the  state  governments  responsible, 
after  lynchings  have  occurred  within  their  boundaries,  for  any 
obligations  to  foreign  countries,  which  the  Department  of  State 
feels  bound  to  recognize.  Neither  has  the  criminal  prosecution 
of  lynchers  been  held  to  be  within  the  jurisdiction  of  federal 
authority. 

Shall  lynchings  continue,  therefore?  What  the  answer  is  to 
be  depends  ultimately,  and  indeed  primarily,  upon  the  character 
and  the  quality  of  the  American  citizenship  that  is  being  devel 
oped.  Enough  has  already  been  said  to  indicate  how  little  is  to 
be  gained,  in  this  country,  from  prohibitive  legal  enactments 
which  have  no  effective  public  sentiment  behind  them.  The  results 
actually  obtained  under  the  anti-lynching  statutes  adopted  thus 
far  bear  this  out.  Ten  states  have  upon  their  statute-books 
measures  directed  specifically  against  lynching.  Most  of  these 
measures  have  remained  entirely  inoperative.  The  few  that  have 
received  an  attempted  enforcement  do  not  inspire  confidence  in 
their  efficacy.  The  course  taken  by  the  debate,  in  the  57th  Con 
gress  of  the  United  States,  on  a  proposed  inquiry  into  the  subject 
of  lynching,  is  fairly  conclusive  evidence  that  no  federal  action 
can  be  taken  on  the  subject  without  reviving  the  sectionalism 
and  many  of  the  evils  of  the  Reconstruction  Period.  However 
much  we  may  regret  the  fact  and  however  reluctant  we  may  be 
to  face  the  situation,  it  must  be  admitted  that  there  is  no  panacea 
for  the  practice  of  lynching.  The  history  of  the  practice  shows 
how  deeply  it  is  rooted  in  American  life  and  tradition,  and  in  how 
far,  also,  it  is  a  matter  that  is  controlled  by  public  sentiment. 

The  conclusion  is  therefore  forced  upon  us  that  nothing  can, 
under  the  limitation  of  our  form  of  government,  effectually  stop 


148  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

lynchings  except  a  radical  change  in  public  sentiment.  A  lynch 
ing  is  best  defined  as  a  summary  and  illegal  execution  at  the 
hands  of  a  mob,  or  a  number  of  persons,  who  have  in  some 
degree  the  public  opinion  of  the  community  behind  them,  i  The 
support  of  public  opinion  is  what  distinguishes  Iynchings7~6n  the 
one  hand,  from  assassination  and  murder,  and,  on  the  other 
hand,  from  insurrection  and  open  warfare.  Upon  American 
citizenship  rests  the  responsibility  of  withdFawing  this  popular 
support  and  justification  without  which  the  practice  of  lynching 
cannot  exist. 

There  is  an  opinion,  widely  held. at  the  present  time,  that  a 
"right  to  lynch"  exists,  a  right  which  is  closely  akin  to  the  right 
of  self-defense.  The  argument  seems  to  run  in  this  way.  If  it 
is  justifiable,  by  the  right  of  self-defense,  for  a  husband  to  take 
the  life  of  an  assailant  who  threatens  his  wife,  or  for  a  parent  to 
commit  murder  in  the  defense  of  his  child,  it  is  equally  justifiable 
for  the  neighbors  and  friends  of  a  man  who  has  been  murdered, 
or  whose  wife  or  daughter  has  been  criminally  assaulted, 
wantonly  and  brutally,  by  ^some  individual  of  bad  reputation,  to 
take  the  life  of  that  individual  in  a  summaryf^-shion  with  only 
the  merest  semblance  of  judicial  procedure.  |{Lynching  is  re 
garded  as  a  crime  only  in  the  sense  that  if  "Is  a"  crime  against 
the  individual  lynched  and,  as  the  individual  in  question  is  of  no 
consequence,  the  crime  of  lynching  is  of  no  consequenceM  This 
belief  in  a  right  to  lynch  affords  some  explanation  of  the  fact 
that  lynchers,  so  far,  ordinarily,  from  suffering  any  legal  penalty 
for  their  crime,  rarely  even  Jose  caste  or  character  in  the  com 
munities  in  which  they  live. 

The  facts  in  regard  to  the  practice  of  lynching,  its  history  and 
its  alleged  justification,  must  be  known.  No  one  should  deceive 
himself  by  thinking  that  because,  for  the  last  two  or  three  years, 
a  smaller  number  of  lynchings  has  been  recorded  annually  than 
for  several  preceding  years,  the  practice  is  likely  soon  to  be  dis 
continued  altogether.  As  long  as  there  is  a  "race  problem"  in 
this  country,  frequent  occasion  will  certainly  be  found  for  a 
recourse  to  summary  procedure,  for  which  it  will  be  compar 
atively  easy  to  secure  a  measure  of  popular  justification.  Only 
an  aroused  public  sentiment,  condemnatory  to  the  last  degree, 
formed  on  the  widest  possible  knowledge  and  intelligence,  and 
actively  manifested  with  the  utmost  wisdom  and  foresight  under 


THE   NEGRO   PROBLEM  149 

trying  circumstances,   can   enable   the   American  people  to  blot 
out  what  has   rightly  been   called  their  national  crime. 

Shall  the  United  States  enter  a  protest  against  massacres  in 
Armenia,  or  in  Russia,  or  against  butcheries  in  Central  Africa, 
or  the  Philippines?  By  all  means.  But  the  American  people 
should  not  forget  that  fully  3,500  residents  of  the  United  States 
have  been  put  to  death  since  the  year  1880,  by  violent  and 
wholly  illegal  methods.  Some  of  these  victims  suffered  extreme 
torture  before  death  came  to  their  relief,  and  their  sufferings 
were  witnessed  by  crowds  in  which  were  women  and  children. 
In  the  period  1891-1904,  it  is  on  record  that  25  persons  were 
lynched  by  burning  alive,  some  of  them  under  circumstances  too 
horrible  to  contemplate.  All  of  these  victims  of  burning  alive, 
during  this  period,  were  Negroes,  with  the  exception  of  two  who 
were  Indians,  and  one  of  the  Negroes  was  a  woman.  Possibly 
these  individuals  were,  every  one,  worthless  wretches  and  the 
perpetrators  of  most  despicable  crimes,  but  no  matter  how  great 
the  depravity  of  the  accused  or  how  atrocious  the  crimes  com 
mitted,  this  country  cannot  afford  to  allow  suspected  criminals 
to  be  dealt  with  after  such  a  fashion. 


LYNCHING:  A  NATIONAL  MENACE1 

In  any  discussion  of  a  subject  which,  as  we  commonly  see  it, 
is  strongly  colored  by  our  instincts,  our  feelings,  our  prejudices, 
and  our  habitual  motives,  we  shall  gain  much  if  we  can  begin, 
at  least,  by  viewing  it  in  the  clear  white  light  of  truth.  Let  us 
try  so  to  consider  the  matter  of  lynching.  Let  us  be  as  dis 
passionate  as  we  can.  Let  us  be  sure  that  our  indignation, 
when  it  rises,  comes  as  a  result  of  the  facts,  and  not  in  defiance 
of  them. 

The  first  important  circumstance  to  be  noted  and  remem 
bered  is  that  lynching  is  not  a  Southern,  but  an  American  habit. 
A  philosophical  friend  of  mine  once  remarked  to  me,  after  a 
year  spent  in  France,  England,  Germany,  and  Russia,  that  every 
nation  has  its  own  kind  of  violence,  of  which  it  thinks  little  or 
nothing,  while  it  shudders  at  the  violence  of  other  nations.  -In 
otrrse*4eriy  United  States,  we  express  amazement  over  the 

1  By  James  E.  Gregg,  Principal  of  Hampton  Institute.  Reprinted  from 
The  Southern  Workman,  published  by  Hampton  Institute,  Hampton,  Va. 


SELECTED   ARTICLES 

turbulence  of  British  public  meetings ;  we  still  are  horrified  when 
we  read  of  the  bloody  guillotines  of  the  French  Revolution; 
we  do  not  forget  the  general  outburst  of  righteous  wrath  against 
King  Leopold  of  Belgium  for  his  abominable  cruelties  in  the 
Congo;  our  detestation  of  the  cold-blooded  Russian  bureaucrats 
who  sent  thousands  of  martyr-exiles  to  Siberia  was  quite  as 
deep  as  our  present  angry  contempt  of  the  Bolsheviki;  and  our 
blood  has  boiled  many  times  because  of  Turkish  brutality  and 
fiendishness.  All  this  time,  every  one  of  these  peoples  has  been 
shocked,  and  has  not  hesitated  to  say  so,  by  our  national  fondness 
for  putting  supposed  criminals  to  death  without  trial  or  other 
process  of  law.  Our  attitude  toward  German  atrocities  in  Bel 
gium  and  Northern  France  and  the  German  retorts  are  simply 
the  latest  instance  of  this  curious  symptom.  If  anyone  is 
disposed  to  deny  that  lynching  is  national  ratheV  than  regional, 
the  riots  in  East  St.  Louis,  Illinois,  in  1917,  resulting  in  the 
death  of  over  two  hundred  Negroes,  and  the  horrible  lynching 
at  Coatesville,  Pennsylvania,  in  1911,  should  be  sufficient  to 
show  that  the  burden  of  guilt  does  not  rest  on  the  South  alone. 
A  second  significant  and  usually  unnoticed  fact  is  that  com 
paratively  few  of  the  persons  lynched  are  even  charged  with 
assault  or  attempted  assault — in  1918,  sixteen  out  of  sixty- 
two.  This  disposes  of  the  idea  that  the  motive  of  the  mob  is 
a  chivalrous  determination  to  protect  the  honor  of  white 
women. 

A  third  fact  to  be  observed  is  that  lynchings  commonly 
occur  in  neighborhoods  where  education  is  backward  and  com 
munity  standards  are  low.  If  Georgia,  Louisiana,  Texas,  and 
other  Southern  states  have  won  a  bad  eminence  in  their  record 
of  lynchings,  the  reason  may  largely  be  found  in  the  unen 
lightened  conditions  under  which  too  many  of  their  people,  white 
and  black,  have  been  allowed  to  live. 

A  fourth  fact  is  that  the  best  men  and  women  of  the  South 
are  more  and  more  realizing  the  shame  of  this  evil.  No 
Northerner  has  denounced  it  more  fiercely  than  has  ex-Governor 
Emmet  O'Neal  of  Alabama.  At  the  meeting  of  the  Southern 
Sociological  Congress  in  May  at  Knoxville,  Professor  Edwin 
Mims  of  Vanderbilt  University  spoke  out  with  fiery  eloquence. 
"Lynching,"  he  said,  "is  unjustifiable  under  all  circumstances. 
It  is  wrong  in  the  sight  of  man  and  God.  It  is  a  blot  on  our 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  151 

National  escutcheon  and  is  a  menace  to  the  whole  country.  It 
is  an  economic  peril  to  the  South.  It  is  inexpedient,  unwise, 
and  a  political  mistake.  Above  all,  it  is  a  community  and  a 
National  sin. 

"When  one  set  of  people  sets  up  a  crime  for  which  a  lynch 
ing  is  justifiable,  there  is  nothing  to  prevent  another  group  of 
people  from  setting  up  another  crime  for  which  it  considers 
lynching  equally  justifiable.  A  mob  in  action  knows  no  law. 
It  knows  no  reason.  It  is  governed  only  by  its  passion  at  white 
heat.  If  the  community  cannot  stop  lynching,  then  the  State 
can.  If  the  State  cannot  stop  lynching,  then  the  Nation  can — 
and  WILL." 

There  are  multitudes  of  Southerners  who  are  thinking  like 
wise — more  than  any  of  us  realize.  For  several  years  past  they 
have  been  worthily,  bravely,  and  effectively  represented  by  the 
University  Commission  on  Southern  Race  Questions,  a  notable 
group  of  Southern  collegiate  teachers,  whose  utterances,  re 
strained  and  reasonable,  yet  glowing  with  the  fire  of  patriotism 
and  conscience,  are  doing  much  to  sober,  enlighten,  and  educate 
the  thoughtful  people  of  the  South.  The  Commission's  "open 
letter"  of  January  5,  1916,  declares  that  "lynching  does  more 
than  rob  its  victims  of  their  constitutional  rights  and  of  their 
lives.  It  simultaneously  lynches  law  and  justice  and  civilization, 
and  outrages  all  the  finer  human  sentiments  and  feelings.  The 
wrong  that  it  does  to  the  wretched  victims  is  almost  as  nothing 
compared  to  the  injury  it  does  to  the  lynchers  themselves,  to  the 
community,  and  to  society  at  large.  Lynching  is  a  contagious 
social  disease,  and  as  such  is  of  deep  concern  to  every  American 
citizen  and  to  every  lover  of  civilization.  Civilization  rests 
on  obedience  to  law,  which  means  the  substitution  of  reason 
and  deliberation  for  impulse,  instinct,  and  passion." 

Fifth,  and  finally,  we  should  all  remind  ourselves  that  not 
superciliousness,  nor  self-congratulation,  nor  any  sort  of  Phar 
isaic  self-righteousness,  nor  any  wholesale  condemnation  of  others 
is  going  to  cure  this  public  disease,  this  social  wickedness,  this 
horrible  perversion  of  loyalty  to  the  common  welfare.  The  only 
remedies  are  a  sounder  and  broader  education,  made  possible  for 
all,  a  purer  and  truer  religion,  a  more  courageous  public  spirit 
on  the  part  of  civil  officers,  and  a  wiser,  juster,  more  humane, 
feeling  in  the  hearts  of  all  the  people.  Northerners  and 


152  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

Southerners,  white  men  and  Negroes,  all  of  us  have  been  at 
fault;  all  of  us  can  do  better;  each  of  us  can  help  the  rest. 
The  only  way  out  is  the  way  of  mutual  trust  and  good  will. 


CONCERNING  LYNCHING1 

It  is,  of  course,  first  the  duty  of  the  citizen  to  refrain  from 
lawlessness,  and  thereby  deprive  the  general  government  of 
excuse  for  this  interference  with  state  laws. 

It  is  next  the  duty  of  the  state  to  so  order  its  laws  that 
the  insufficiency  of  them  will  not  be  so  glaring  and  atrocious. 

No  one  who  has  the  slightest  knowledge  of  the  subject  doubts 
but  that  the  laws  of  this  state  are  inadequate  to  the  subject,  both 
as  to  enactment  and  administration. 

The  system  is  such  that  they  always  will  be  inadequate  in 
administration  unless  they  are  materially  altered. 

There  is  usually  much  public  sentiment  against  the  accused 
who  is  lynched;  the  sheriff  is  elected  by  the  people  and  becomes 
thoroughly  awakened  to  the  demands  of  the  constituents ;  if  he 
fails  in  the  discharge  of  his  duties  in  this  respect,  the  triors  are 
to  be  selected  from  the  lynchers  and  their  friends ;  if  he  dis 
charges  his  duty,  he  will  incur  the  enmity  of  those  whom  he 
opposes  and  their  friends.  So  he  reasons  that  it  is  better  to  be 
overpowered,  to  be  surprised  or  to  be  away  from  the  jail. 

No  serious  attempt  made  by  a  jailer  to  prevent  a  lynching 
in  Georgia  has  been  brought  to  light  in  a  long  time.  This  does 
not  mean  that  there  are  not,  and  have  not  been,  in  Georgia 
jailers  who  would  discharge  their  duties  in  this  behalf.  No 
doubt  there  have  been,  and  are  many  such.  The  very  fact 
that  there  are  such  is  sufficient  in  and  of  itself  to  often  prevent 
the  crime  in  the  jurisdiction  of  such  officers. 

This  defect  in  the  state's  laws  is  glaring  and  has  existed  for 
a  long  time  in  spite  of  much  provocation.  The  first  authority  to 
give  heed  to  this  condition  is  the  state.  By  its  own  enactment 
it  should  reserve  this  source  of  initiative.  Sheriffs  form  a  part 
of  the  administrative  or  executive  departments  of  the  state. 
They  should  be  made  accountable  to  the  executive  head  of  the 

1  From  address  delivered  before  the  Georeria  Bar  Association,  by  Mr. 
Robert  C.  Alston,  in  article,  Lynching,  An  Evil  of  County  Government. 
Journal  of  Criminal  Law  and  Criminology.  11:127-31.  May,  1920. 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  153 

state  in  such  matters;  or,  if  not  to  him,  then  they  should,  in 
such  cases,  be  amenable  directly  to  the  Supreme  Court  exercising 
original  jurisdiction. 

The  governor  can  remove  a  railroad  commissioner;  why 
not  a  sheriff?  The  power  need  only  be  written  into  law. 

No  one  who  feels  himself  the  guardian  of  state  rights  will 
for  one  moment  dare  arouse  the  power  of  the  Federal  Govern 
ment  to  exercise  its  power  to  guarantee,  by  appropriate  legis 
lation,  that  the  state  will  not  deprive  a  citizen  of  life,  liberty  or 
property  without  due  process  of  law,  nor  deny  him  the  equal 
protection  of  the  law. 

I  have  not  spoken  of  those  powers  that  a  way  may  be 
pointed  out  to  the  Federal  Government  by  which  its  powers  may 
be  extended.  No  man  desires  more  than  I  that  those  powers 
be  not  extended  over  the  domestic  citizenship  of  the  people ; 
no  one  realizes  more  than  I  that  the  future  prosperity  of  the 
southern  part  of  this  country  rests  upon  the  rights  of  the  state 
to  finally  and  fully  deal  with  this  question  without  interruption. 
No  one  desires  more  than  I  that  it  be  dealt  with  wisely  and 
frankly  and  generously. 

But  it  is  intended  by  what  has  been  said  to  point  out  to  you, 
and  to  those  whom  I  desire  to  think  of  as  my  people,  that  the 
rights  most  deeply  cherished  and  privileges  which  are  of  the 
very  essence  of  our  lives  are  being  endangered  by  a  surrender 
to  passions  which  are  base  and  to  a  wilfulness  which  exchanges 
the  desire  of  the  moment  for  the  very  fundamentals  of  our 
domestic  life. 

Who  will  deny  that  even  selfish  wisdom  dictates  that  justice 
and  moderation  should  prevail  over  lawless  passion,  which  in 
its  fury  destroys  the  victim,  yet  doubly  makes  victims  of  its 
devotees? 

What  excuse  has  the  state  for  failing  to  adequately  protect 
the  prisoner  under  its  lock  and  key  or  in  its  custody? 

What  reason  is  there  for  withholding  the  enactment  of  laws 
which  will  make  the  sheriff  and  his  deputies  amenable  to  a 
jurisdiction  which  is  composed  of  persons  other  than  the  of 
fenders  and  their  sympathizers? 

No  one  believes  that  any  lyncher  will  be  punished,  and 
experience  shows  that  no  real  effort  will  be  made  to  find  who 
the  lynchers  are. 

It  can  no  longer  be  said  that  lynching  is  committed  for  one 


154  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

crime ;  it  is  only  a  few  months  ago  that  two  Negroes  were 
lynched  for  killing  a  mule.  Everybody  knows  that  that  condition 
ought  not  to  exist,  and  yet  none  raises  his  hand  to  its  cure. 
Does  not  this  all  but  invite  the  Federal  Government  to  ake 
cognizance  of  the  guarantee? 

The  legislator  has  felt  that  he  would  antagonize  local  feeling 
if  he  promoted  laws  which  would  give  the  state  a  real  means  of 
redressing  and  preventing  this  crime.  He  would  encounter  the 
argument  that  the  locality  should  govern  itself. 

But  he  should  know  that  by  withholding  such  laws  and  by 
denying  such  protection  to  the  persons  who  are  in  the  custody 
of  the  law  he  participates  in  perpetuating  a  situation  which 
demands  remedy  and  which,  if  unremedied,  invites  the  inter 
ference  of  the  central  government,  and  threatens,  to  a  degree 
which  we  do  not  like  to  contemplate,  the  rights  of  the  state 
over  matters  absolutely  essential  to  our  welfare. 

The  legislator  will  find  that  the  real  enemy  of  local  self- 
government  is  he  who  persists  in  the  maintenance  of  a  system  of 
laws  which  do  not,  in  fact,  govern,  but  which  offer  the  shadow 
for  substance. 

The  man  who  most  imperils  the  right  of  the  state  to  govern 
its  own  affairs  is  he  who  aids  it  to  govern  wrongfully. 


RACE  RIOTS  IN  RELATION  TO  DEMOCRACY  1 

The  conditions  in  the  local  community,  the  change  in  the 
mind  of  the  Negro,  and  America's  new  relation  to  oppressed 
and  liberated  peoples  give  the  recent  race  riots  a  serious  im 
portance  to  our  democracy.  Our  democracy  must  be  safe  at 
home,  or  we  shall  be  humiliated  in  our  efforts  for  democracy 
abroad.  We  have  overthrown  the  despotism  of  the  few.  Let 
us  beware  lest  we  be  overcome  by  the  tyranny  of  the  many. 

Race  riots  grow  out  of  complex  conditions  which  may  be 
seen  and  remedied.  Sensational  newspaper  publicity  about  crimes 
of  Negroes,  unpunished  lawless  acts  of  white  persons  against 
Negroes,  misunderstandings,  fears  and  suspicions  of  the  two 
races  that  live  almost  in  two  separate  worlds  are  all  breeders 
of  racial  antagonism  and  conflict.  Careful  examination  of  these 

1  By  George  E.  Haynes,  Director  of  Negro  Economics,  United  States 
Department  of  Labor.  Survey.  42:697-9  August  9,  1919. 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  155 

factors  is  of  imperative  importance  to  every  thoughtful  Amer 
ican. 

Briefly  considering  the  conditions  in  the  local  community, 
one  finds  the  growing  town  and  city  Negro  populations  segregated 
into  districts  and  neighborhoods.  In  such  districts,  Negroes  are 
neglected  in  public  schools,  public  sanitation  and  health,  fire  and 
police  protection  and  other  public  facilities.  Often  the  red  light 
element  of  the  white  world  is  crowded  among  or  near  them. 
Many  Negroes  feel  that  by  the  methods  of  competition,  fair 
or  unfair,  they  have  been  kept  out  of  the  most  desirable  jobs 
and  economic  advantages.  They  believe  that  much  of  the 
antipathy  toward  them  has  its  origin  here. 

New  York  has  its  segregated  Harlem  and  Columbus  Hill 
districts,  Washington  has  its  northwest  and  southwest  areas 
(the  scene  of  many  of  the  recent  race  riots),  Chicago  has  its 
State  street,  Atlanta  its  Auburn  avenue  and  its  West  End. 
When  the  United  States  Supreme  Court  declared  segregation 
ordinances  void,  real  estate  understandings  and  gentlemen's 
agreements  remained  valid.  These  restrictions  on  property  rights 
of  Negroes  are  not  always  confined  to  residential  districts  but 
often  to  business  properties  as  well. 

Besides  the  separation  into  neighborhoods,  an  increasing 
number  of  Negroes  have  little  or  no  occasion  for  business  or 
professional  dealings  with  white  people.  With  the  additional 
separation  in  churches,  schools,  railways,  street-cars  and  other 
public  places,  even  hospitals  and  cemeteries,  there  is  developing 
a  racial  cleavage  from  the  cradle  to  the  grave.  This  cleavage 
leaves  little  or  no  personal  contact  for  the  growth  of  mutual 
understanding  and  mutual  good-will.  Without  sufficient  contacts 
for  knowledge  to  the  contrary,  popular  opinion  of  white  people 
classified  the  law-abiding,  thrifty,  industrious  and  intelligent 
Negroes  indiscriminately  with  the  lawless  and  the  undesirable. 
The  entire  race  is  popularly  charged  with  the  criminal  acts  of 
the  individual  Negro.  Thus  misunderstanding,  fears,  suspicions, 
prejudices  are  lighted.  They  smolder.  A  crime  or  a  street  fight 
occurs,  and  the  slumbering  racial  feelings  on  both  sides  burst 
into  flames. 

This  lack  of  contact  has  increased  with  the  years.  Older 
residents  of  Washington  and  Chicago  tell  you  of  the  growing 
racial  antagonism  with  the  growth  of  separation.  Only  a  few 
weeks  before  the  riots  in  both  cities,  some  leading  people  of 


156  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

Washington  were  discussing  the  fact  that  in  former  years  the 
white  and  colored  representatives  of  various  philanthropic  and 
community  agencies  were  accustomed  to  meet  more  frequently 
than  now  for  the  exchange  of  views  and  plans  on  matters  of 
community  interest.  The  holding  of  such  meetings  has  grown 
more  difficult  and  less  frequent. 

This  situation  is  a  good  seed-bed  for  the  sensational  news 
paper  publicity  about  Negro  criminals.  Several  Negroes  within 
as  many  months  may  commit  or  be  accused  of  crimes  in  a 
community.  The  newspapers  play  upon  these  with  flaring  head 
lines  and  minute  descriptions  suggestive  of  racial  turpitude  and 
criminal  tendencies.  Some  newspapers  have  been  known  to 
manufacture  suggestive  news.  During  the  Washington  riots, 
one  newspaper  went  so  far  as  to  give  the  announcement  of  the 
time  and  place  for  the  rendevous  of  men  in  the  service  for  a 
"clean-up  that  will  cause  events"  of  the  preceding  days  "to  pale 
into  insignificance." 

It  is  common  knowledge  that  nearly  every  one  of  the  serious 
city  race  riots  in  the  last  ten  years  was  preceded  by  a  period 
of  sensational  newspaper  publicity.  Thousands  of  peaceable, 
law-abiding  Negro  citizens  of  sterling  character  in  city  after 
city  had  life,  limb  and  property  destroyed  or  put  in  jeopardy 
partly  because  of  the  'excitement  aroused  by  sensational  news 
paper  publicity.  Further,  events  that  have  transpired,  while 
they  may  not  be  different  from  those  happening  among  other 
defenseless  classes,  serve  to  make  Negroes  doubt  that  the  law 
will  be  impartially  enforced  for  them.  For  the  last  four  montns 
the  repeated  bombing  of  Negro  homes  with  little  or  no  appre 
hension  of  the  perpetrators  was  reported  from  Chicago.  Negroes 
claim  that  sometimes  abuses  and  injuries  by  officers  of  the  law 
are  passed  without  much  redress.  They  point  out  that  lynchings 
have  continued  for  a  generation  in  spite  of  much  protest.  One 
of  the  leading  Negro  newspapers  said  recently:  "The  failure  of 
authorities  to  enforce  the  law  has  created  a  feeling  of  distrust 
and  resentment  on  the  part  of  American  Negroes  which  should 
not  be  a  source  of  surprise  to  those  who  reason  from  cause  to 
effect.  This  state  of  mind  is  not  confined  to  Washington."  The 
discussion  and  anxiety  about  these  things  are  ever  present  and 
are  changing  the  Negro's  attitude.  He  says  his  safety  demands 
that  he  protect  himself  and  his  home. 

This  new  understanding  of  the  meaning  of  liberty  has  been 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  157 

driven  deep  into  the  consciousness  of  the  masses  of  Negroes. 
The  thinking  and  feeling  of  the  Negroes  themselves,  therefore, 
when  in  contact  with  the  white  community,  has  assumed  a  new 
aspect.  The  new  experiences  in  the  migration,  in  the  war 
services  and  in  the  new  economic  opportunities  has  developed 
a  new  Negro.  It  is  not  to  be  denied  that  in  shuffling  off  the 
coil  of  servility,  the  Negro  will  pass  through  a  transition  period 
of  awkwardness  to  achieve  civility.  This  calls  for  sympathetic 
understanding  and  guidance,  not  scolding  and  censure;  for  all 
kinds  of  .education ;  for  poised,  respected  Negro  leadership ;  for 
community  contacts  and  cooperation ;  for  opportunities,  not 
restrictions.  Withal,  there  is  need  of  reckoning  with  the  opinions 
of  this  new  Negro,  who  is  doing  some  thinking  and  speaking 
for  himself. 


WHAT  IS  BEHIND  THE  NEGRO  UPRISINGS?1 

The  riots  in  Washington  and  in  Chicago  following  upon 
disturbances  in  St.  Louis,  accompanied  by  racial  bitterness  in 
Pennsylvania  and  a  strained  situation  throughout  the  South, 
with  riots  barely  averted  in  Memphis  and  Birmingham,  have 
forced  upon  the  attention  of  the  country  the  fact  that  the 
relation  of  the  races  is  a  national  problem.  The  Negro  does  not 
constitute  that  problem,  but  the  attitude  of  the  white  man 
toward  him.  The  white  South  is  still  very  largely  envisaging 
that  problem  in  terms  of  "racial  inferiority,"  "social  equality," 
"Negro  criminality,"  and  "rape."  In  the  North  the  problem,  as 
was  well  shown  by  the  riot  in  Chicago,  beginning  Sunday,  July 
27,  and  continuing  for  three  days,  is  almost  entirely  economic. 
Hoodlums  and  perverts  can,  of  course,  be  relied  upon  to  make 
racial  or  any  other  superficial  difference  between  men  the 
occasion  of  brutal  assault  and  bloody  violence.  But  in  Chicago 
the  words  most  often  used  in  accounting  for  the  bitter  feeling 
which  existed  were  not  "Negro  criminality,"  "brutal  assaults 
upon  women,"  but  "decline  of  real  estate  values,"  "invasion  of 
white  residential  districts  by  Negroes,"  "housing,"  "friction 
between  union  men  and  unorganized  Negroes." 

1  From  article  by  Herbert  J.  Seligmann,  of  the  National  Association 
for  the  Advancement  of  Colored  People.  Current  Opinion.  67:154-5. 
September,  1919. 


158  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

The  civilization  of  the  South  has  been  a  Jim  Crow  civiliza 
tion.  That  is,  the  Negro  has  not  only  been  denied  equal  treat 
ment  in  the  courts,  proper  policing,  lighting  and  housing,  but, 
as  oft-cited  statistics  show,  provision  for  education  of  his 
children  and  for  his  health  has  been  in  many  sections  lament 
ably  deficient.  The  means  used  to  "keep  the  Negro  in  his  place" 
in  the  South  has  been  lynching  and  mob  violence  or  a  threat  of 
violence,  a  form  of  Prussianism  which  is  coming  to  be  increas 
ingly  condemned  by  Southerners  themselves.  Temporarily  at 
least,  the  reflex  of  the  Negro's  increasing  prosperity  as.  a  result 
of  the  war,  his  feeling  that  he  must  have  his  rights  even  if  it  is 
necessary  to  fight  for  them,  have  intensified  race  hatred  through 
out  the  South.  It  is  not  unlikely  that  there  will  be  a  number 
of  severe  clashes.  Eventually  it  will  be  necessary  to  recognize 
his  status  as  a  citizen  upon  which  the  Negro  is  going  to  insist 
and  to  cooperate  with  him  through  proper  education  and 
sanitation. 

The  Washington  and  the  Chicago  riots  are  expressions  of 
these  two  phases  of  the  race  problem  in  the  United  States. 
There  are  two  types  of  race  riots.  The  first  is  the  chiefly 
sentimental  or  passional  riot  which  was  exemplified  in  Wash 
ington  and  occurs  most  frequently  in  the  South.  The  second 
is.  the  preponderantly  business  or  economic  race  riot,  of  which 
Chicago  was  typical.  In  many  respects  the  Washington  race 
riot  was  similiar  to  the  Atlanta  riot  which  occurred  in  Sep 
tember,  1906.  For  months  before  Saturday,  July  19,  when  the 
outbreak  in  Washington  occurred,  newspapers  had  been  featuring 
Negro  crime  in  bold  headlines.  So  dangerous  had  the  state 
of  the  public  mind  in  Washington  become  early  in  July  that 
on  the  Qth  of  that  month  the  Washington  Branch  of  the  Na 
tional  Association  for  the  Advancement  of  Colored  People 
wrote  to  the  four  leading  Washington  newspapers  calling  the 
attention  of  the  editors  to  the  menacing  situation  which  their 
journals  were  instrumental  in  creating.  The  letters  predicted 
race  riots  unless  the  newspaper  headlines  and  news  articles 
were  made  more  moderate.  One  of  these  newspapers,  the  Wash 
ington  Star,  acknowledged  the  justice  of  the  warning. 

The  alleged  "crime  wave"  in  Washington,  like  most  crime 
waves  and  other  hysterical  fictions,  dwindles  upon  close  scrutiny. 
The  records  of  the  Washington  Police  Department  furnished 
by  Major  Pullman,  Chief  of  the  Washington  Police,  showed 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  159 

three  attempted  assaults  and  one  case  of  rape  from  June  25  to 
July  18  in  the  District  of  Columbia,  the  man  suspected  of  three 
of  the  assaults  being  at  the  time  of  the  riots  a  prisoner.  Never 
theless,  newspaper  reports  sent  all  over  the  country  from  Wash 
ington  ascribed  the  riots  to  "many  assaults"  upon  white  women 
in  Washington  by  Negroes.  One  of  the  Washington  news 
papers,  the  Washington  Post,  went  so  far  as  to  announce  an 
unofficial  "mobilization"  of  service  men  for  a  "clean-up,"  a  direct 
invitation  to  attack  upon  Washington  Negroes.  There  was  no 
question  as  to  the  initial  aggression  of  white  men  upon  Negroes 
in  Washington.  Commissioner  Brownlow  of  the  District  of 
Columbia  characterized  the  attacks,  most  of  them  led  by  men 
in  the  uniform  of  the  United  States,  as  wanton  and  uncalled  for. 
The  Washington  difficulties  were  accentuated  by  an  inadequate 
police  force,  and  it  was  only  rain  and  the  advent  of  General 
Hann  in  command  of  the  federal  troops  that  put  an  end  to  the 
disorder. 

One  of  the  most  striking  features  of  both  the  Washington 
and  Chicago  race  riots  was  what  journalists  call  the  score. 
It  was  not  simply  Negroes  in  these  riots  that  were  hounded 
and  beaten  and  shot;  white  men,  too,  suffered  severely.  The 
majority  of  casualties  were  among  the  Negroes,  it  is  true,  but 
the  Negroes  fought  back.  Distrusting  white  men,  distrusting 
a  white  police  which  permitted  attacks  on  them,  distrusting  an 
administration  which  delayed  three  days  while  bloody  riots  were 
in  progress,  Negroes  in  Washington  armed.  On  the  night  of 
Monday,  July  21,  the  life  of  any  unaccompanied  white  man  in 
the  Negro  residential  districts  along  U  Street  in  Washington 
was  in  danger.  Mainly,  Negroes  armed  because  they  were  afraid 
the  police  would  permit  white  mobs  to  burn  their  homes,  assault 
their  families.  But  a  new  spirit  was  manifest  among  them  and, 
as  one  prominent  Negro  said  in  the  office  of  Commissioner 
Brownlow,  the  members  of  his  race  were  beginning  to  realize 
that  it  might  be  necessary  to  fight  and  to  die  in  defense  of  their 
manhood  in  this  country  as  they  had  fought  and  died  in  defense 
of  democracy  on  the  battlefields  of  Europe. 

The  same  fighting  spirit  was  manifest  in  Chicago.  Here 
again  aggression  had  come  from  white  men.  When  50,000 
Negroes  overtaxed  the  so-called  "Black  Belt"  of  Chicago,  having 
been  invited  to  come  there  by  labor  agents,  or  having  come  on 
their  own  accord  to  take  their  place  in  industry,  no  provision 


160  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

was  made  to  house  them.  White  property  owners  denounced 
colored  people  who  sought  a  place  to  live  as  "undesirables." 
It  is  true  that  property  values  did  decline  and  many  white 
residents  who  moved  out  of  districts  adjacent  to  the  "Black 
Belt"  sold  their  homes  at  a  loss;  but  such  property  often  im 
mediately  thereafter  rose  in  value  because  the  real  estate  men, 
into  whose  hands  it  passed,  found  the  migrant  Negro  a  rich 
field  for  exploitation  and  charged  him  anywhere  up  to  double 
what  had  been  charged  whites. 

Unquestionably,  race  antagonisms  were  fomented  for  busi 
ness  purposes  in  Chicago.  In  the  absence  of  any  measure  to 
deal  with  the  problems  created  by  the  abnormal  influx  of 
southern  Negroes,  racial  tension  grew  constantly  more  threat 
ening.  Out  of  the  bitterness  of  white  property-owners  came 
bombings  of  houses  inhabited  by  or  let  to  Negroes  in  white 
districts.  Two  men  arrested  charged  with  these  bombings 
were  granted  several  extensions  in  the  Chicago  court.  One 
was  a  clerk  in  a  real  estate  concern. 

To  the  housing  difficulty  was  added  that  of  the  political 
exploitation  of  the  Negro  by  the  Thompson  administration 
which  owed  its  election  to  the  Negro  vote  of  the  Second  Ward. 
In  return  for  the  Negro  vote  the  Thompson  administration 
permitted  the  "Black  Belt"  to  become  a  center  of  vice,  and 
Negro  politicians  cooperated  in  exploiting  the  members  of  their 
own  race. 

Within  an  hour  of  the  initial  aggression  by  white  men, 
Chicago  was  in  an  uproar.  Thereafter  for  three  days  it  was 
unsafe  for  Negroes  to  leave  their  own  district,  and  two  unof- 
tending  colored  men  were  killed  in  the  down-town  business  and 
shopping  district  known  as  the  "Loop."  The  fact  that  trouble 
was  confined  to  the  "Black  Belt"  shows  that  colored  men 
were  not  aggressors,  but  that  the  trouble  came  from  white 
hoodlums  wlio  invaded  the  colored  residence  district  on  foot, 
and  when  they  were  prevented,  in  automobiles,  shooting  promis 
cuously.  As  soon  as  the  state  militia  barred  the  colored  district 
to  white  hoodlums,  disorders  ceased. 

No  conclusion  drawn  from  either  or  both  of  the  types  of 
riot  represented  by  the  occurrences  in  Washington  and  in  Chicago 
will  bring  about  an  immediate  solution  of  the  race  problem  in 
this  country,  involved  as  it  is  in  emotion,  economic  and  political 
motives,  but  those  two  riots  have  made  certain  facts  intolerably 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  161 

obvious.-  One  of  these  facts  is  that  newspapers  are  responsible 
for  violence  which  arises  out  of  the  hysteria  stimulated  by  ex 
aggerated  and  misleading  reports  of  crime  waves,  and  that  crime 
must  be  treated  as  an  individual  and  not  a  racial  matter.  The 
superstition  fostered  in  the  southern  press  that  the  Negro  is  a 
criminal  and  a  rapist  is  being  steadily  met  by  indisputable  facts 
and  statistics  which  show  that  a  relatively  small  number  of 
lynchings  are  even  ascribed  to  attacks  upon  white  women. 

The  Chicago  riots  show  that  it  is  unsafe  to  leave  the  delicate 
problem  of  race  relations,  aggravated  as  it  is  by  the  necessity 
for  assimilating  large  quantities  of  immigrants,  to  those  groups 
of  the  community  mainly  interested  in  'exploiting  the  newcomers. 
What  the  race  question  needs  more  than  anything  else  is  ra 
tional  discussion,  a  stripping  away  of  the  emotional  phrases, 
the  sentimentality  and  the  deliberate  misrepresentation  which 
obscure  the  real  issues. 


THE  ECONOMIC  INTERPRETATION  OF 
PEONAGE  * 


With  the  unexpected  conviction  of  John  S.  Williams,  owner 
of  the  Georgia  "murder  farm,"  for  the  killing  of  one  Negro, 
the  subsequent  indictment  of  his  sons  and  of  several  field 
hands  in  Newton  County  there  has  come  to  light  peonage  and 
its  sinister  operations.  What  the  ultimate  outcome  of  further 
investigations  now  contemplated  by  Federal  authorities  will  be 
it  is  extremely  difficult  to  say,  for  Governor  Dorsey  recently 
stated  in  the  course  of  an  address  in  New  York  that  "Peonage 
is  not  confined  alone  to  Georgia  ...  it  exists  in  greater,  or 
less,  mostly  less,  measure  wherever  there  are  large  masses  of 
Negroes."  At  the  same  time  it  does  not  appear  that  these 
investigations  will  be  extended  beyond  a  few  backward  counties 
in  Georgia.  The  first  peg  in  abolishing  peonage,  nevertheless, 
has  been  entered  successfully  and  with  continual  agitation 
against  it  such  as  is  being  waged  by  the  National  Association 
for  the  Advancement  of  Colored  People  we  may  look  expectantly 
forward  to  the  time  when  every  vestige  of  the  new  slavery  is 
expugned  from  the  United  States. 

Indictments  against  additional  offenders  have  been  obtained 

1  Challenge   Magazine.     3:17-22.    June,    1921. 


162  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

in  both  Jasper  and  Newton  counties,  but  the  vital  object  to  be 
aimed  at  in  connection  with  further  prosecutions  is  the  basic 
cause  of  an  industrial  maladjustment  to  which  both  the  baron, 
Williams,  and  his  slaves  became  victims.  To  get  at  this  cause  an 
understanding  of  the  economic  foundation  of  peonage  is  neces 
sary,  and  a  knowledge  of  the  conditions  as  they  obtain  in  those 
sections  of  Georgia  where  the  Federal  powers  have  been,  and 
apparently  still  are,  diligently  at  work. 

The  census  of  1910  gives  to  Jasper  county  a  Negro  population 
of  11,484,  all  mostly  landless  serfs.  Since  1910  this  population 
has  probably  shifted  to  other  parts  of  the  country  in  the  great 
exodus  that  started  out  of  the  South  for  the  North  during  the 
war,  a  fact  that  is  most  significant  in  that  no  matter  how  few 
were  drained  off  by  this  unprecedented  industrial  readjustment, 
the  vacuum  thus  created  operated  as  an  incentive  to  the  further 
promotion  of  peonage  in  that  particular  county  by  decreasing  its 
supply  of  labor.  Similar  reactions  to  the  same  events  prevailed 
throughout  the  entire  South,  which  means  that  the  Negroes  who 
came  out  of  the  South  did  secure  a  mite  more  of  security  and  a 
considerably  increased  wage,  but  those  left  behind  became  more 
insecure  and  sank  deeper  into  slavery. 

There  was  distributed  among  Jasper  county's  Negro  popula 
tion,  in  1910,  119  farm  homes  of  which  92  were  unencumbered,  27 
being  tied  up  with  some  sort  of  lien,  695  other  homes  of  which 
only  42  were  owned  free  and  clear,  n  others  owned  but  en 
cumbered,  642  being  rented.  The  actual  ownership  of  homes  by 
this  large  Negro  population  numbered  only  134,  which  indicates 
that  even  at  that  time  when  conditions  in  America  were  normal 
and  poor  people  had  less  difficulty  than  now  in  procuring  suffi 
cient  food  and  clothing  that  the  Negroes  of  Jasper  county  were 
moving  along  the  dead  line  of  starvation.  It  will,  perhaps,  be 
argued  that  the  fact  that  Negroes  showed  so  little  progress  in 
property  ownership  is  because  as  a  race  they  are  thriftless, 
inclined  to  dissipate  their  earnings  as  soon  as  received.  Such 
an  argument,  however,  when  applied  to  the  South  has  no  foun 
dation ;  for  it  is  in  the  South  particularly  where  they  are  most 
thrifty  and  amenable  to  almost  every  advantage  offered  them  to 
purchase  their  own  homes.  On  the  other  hand  further  statistics 
selected  from  the  same  census  as  those  above  tend  to  prove 
conclusively  that  such  a  fact  even  in  Jasper  county,  and  it  is 
this  contradiction  that  opens  for  us  a  wide  aperture  for  analysing 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  163 

the  fundamentally  economic  fabric  so  deftly  interwoven  into 
the  structure  of  peonage.  .  .  In  1910  Negro  farmers  had  under 
cultivation  in  Jasper  county  100,652  acres  of  land  to  70,163  of 
the  whites ;  the  former  produced  16,943  bales  of  cotton,  the 
latter  8,905;  the  former  produced  in  1909  127,017  bushels  of  corn, 
the  latter  92,951 ;  the  former  owned  1,939  work  mules,  the 
latter  1,153;  the  former  1,466  cows,  the  latter  1,051;  the  former, 
machinery  and  farm  implements  valued  at  $68,283;  the  latter, 
identical  accessories,  valued  at  $88,278.  In  two  instances  only, 
according  to  the  census  compiled  by  the  Department  of  Com 
merce,  is  Negro  wealth  overtopped  by  that  of  white  people, 
consisting  in  the  ownership  of  homes  of  all  sorts  and  farm 
machinery.  In  all  else  the  Negro  leads.  On  the  face  of  mere 
figures  such  is  the  case.  Considering  facts,  it  is  just  the  contrary 
as  I  shall  now  show. 

Although  the  census  credits  Negro  farmers  with  the  owner 
ship  of  all  land  under  cultivation  by  them  in  1910,  with  the  pro 
duction  of  8,039  more  bales  of  cotton,  27,017  more  bushels  of 
corn,  with  the  ownership  of  786  more  mules,  415  more  cows 
than  the  whites,  the  fact  is  that  the  big  bulk  of  this  reputed 
ownership  of  property  and  production  of  farm-stuffs  did  not 
carry  with  it  any  title.  The  majority  of  these  Negroes  were 
tenants  under  one  or  the  other  of  the  various  oppressive 
agricultural  systems  that  prevail  throughout  all  the  rural  South. 
The  system  works  in  this  fashion.  Illiterate  white  and  black 
men  in  some  instances,  in  others  intelligent  white  men  and 
illiterate  Negroes  enter  into  contracts  which  the  whites  soon 
come  to  consider  as  binding  only  on  the  Negroes.  White  land 
owners  'either  too  lazy  or  indifferent  to  cultivate  and  plant 
their  own  land,  agree  to  let  it  at  so  many  bales  of  cotton  or  at 
so  many  bushels  of  corn,  etc.,  per  acre.  A  Negro  is  usually 
the  renter,  although  there  are  thousands  of  white  tenants  also. 
If  the  season  is  flourishing  the  landlord  who  has  not  planted  a 
seed  nor  touched  the  ground  with  a  plow  demands  and  gets  a 
great  deal  more  in  compensation  than  the  contract  originally 
stipulated  he  should  get.  If  the  tenant  be  a  Negro  he  dare  not 
refuse  to  comply  with  these  demands  unless  he  desires  to  invite 
complete  confiscation  of  his  entire  crop.  His  sole  protection 
is  in  his  obedience  to  the  white  man  from  whom  he  has  rented 
his  farm.  If  the  season  be  disastrous  and  the  cotton  or  corn 
crop  is  destroyed  by  boll-weevil  or  beetle  the  Negro  tenant  unable 


164  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

to  meet  his  obligations  finds  himself  further  in  debt  to  meet 
which  he  must  sign  another  contract  agreeing  to  pay  it  out  in 
work.  From  tenant  farmer  he  now  becomes  a  peon.  The  new 
contract  may  call  for  a  year's  labor  or  two  years'  or  forever 
because  the  peon  being  absolutely  dependent  on  the  landlord  for 
food,  clothing  and  shelter,  continues  to  slip  further  and  further 
into  the  inextricable  meshes  of  debt.  "In  one  extreme  case," 
states  Ray  Stannard  Baker  in  his  book,  "Following  the  Color 
Line,"  "a  Negro  tenant,  after  years  of  work,  decided  to  leave  the 
planter.  He  had  had  a  place  offered  to  him  where  he  could 
make  more  money.  There  was  nothing  against  him;  he  simply 
wanted  to  move.  But  the  landlord  informed  him  that  no  wagon 
would  be  permitted  to  cross  his  (the  planter's)  land  to  get  his 
household  belongings.  The  Negro,  being  ignorant,  supposed  he 
could  thus  be  prevented  from  moving,  and  although  the  friend 
who  was  trying  to  help  him  assured  him  that  the  landlord 
could  not  prevent  his  moving,  he  dared  not  go."  Here  we  have 
peonage  in  all  of  its  rottenness  and  you  thought  slavery  was 
dead.  And  it  is  the  crops  of  these  peons  that  creep  into  agri 
cultural  census  just  as  they  crept  in  in  1910  giving  the  Negroes 
of  Jasper  county  an  abundance  of  wealth  over  the  white  popula 
tion.  There  is  still  another  side. 

Whenever  the  wealthy  planter  with  a  wish  to  work  his  own 
plantation  and  to  reap  from  it  in  profits  all  that  the  traffic  will 
bear  without  entering  into  any  business  transactions  with  "nig 
gers  or  poor  white  trash,"  other  methods  are  easily  employed. 
Peonage  is  the  result  just  the  same.  Enforced  labor  in  payment 
of  debt  is  generally  the  interpretation  given  to  it,  but  peonage  in 
every  form  would  be  impossible  if  the  present  profit  system  did 
not  exist. 

John  S.  Williams  was  a  large  plantation  owner,  one  of  a 
diminutive  agricultural  oligarchy  that  has  taken  the  place  of  that 
larger  and  more  powerful  oligarchy  of  slavery,  the  holdings  of 
which  in  rural  Southern  centers  and  especially  in  those  so  geo 
graphically  situated  as  Jasper  and  Newton  counties  influence  to 
an  alarming  degree  their  legal  machinery  throughout.  This  legal 
control  is  entirely  necessary  to  the  successful  maintenance  of 
peonage  which  is  a  Federal  offense  and  was  first  viciously 
attacked  by  Judge  Emory  Speer  during  the  regime  of  Theodore 
Roosevelt.  Plainly,  to  obtain  the  desired  protection  for  them  in 
their  unconstitutional  practices  these  wealthy  planters  are  instru- 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  165 

mental  in  selecting  the  sheriffs  and  justices  of  the  peace,  or  other 
officers,  of  their  communities  who  can  be  relied  upon  at  all 
times  to  assist  them  (the  planters)  in  furthering  their  aims.  The 
achievements  of  these  ends  are  by  no  means  difficult  in  back 
woods  counties  like  Jasper  and  Newton  where  each  white  man  is 
known  by  the  other.  The  sheriff  when  elected  is  required  to 
arrest  Negroes  continually  on  the  slightest  pretenses;  the  justice 
is  required  to  sentence  them  to  the  convict  camps  and  peniten 
tiaries  and,  if  not  this  directly,  to  impose  upon  them  such  fines 
as  they  cannot  pay,  which  means  the  same  as  a  sentence ;  for 
if  a  Negro  offender  is  paid  out  by  a  white  man,  he  must  work 
out  the  fine  with  no  definite  limit  set  as  to  the  time  in  which 
this  may  be  done. 

"One  reason  for  the  very  large  number  of  arrests — in  Georgia 
particularly — lies  in  the  fact  that  the  State  and  counties  make  a 
profit  out  of  the  prison  system.  No  attempt  is  ever  made  to 
reform  a  criminal,  either  white  or  colored.  Convicts  are  hired 
out  to  private  contractors  or  worked  in  the  public  roads.  Last 
year  (1907)  the  net  profit  to  Georgia  from  its  chain-gangs,  to 
which  the  prison  commission  refers  with  pride,  reached  the 
great  sum  of  $354,853.55.  The  demand  for  convicts  by  rich  saw 
mill  operators,  owners  of  brick-yards,  large  farmers,  and  others, 
is  far  in  advance  of  the  supply.  The  natural  tendency  is  to 
convict  as  many  men  as  possible — it  furnishes  steady,  cheap 
labor  to  the  contractors  and  a  profit  to  the  State.  .  .  Some  of 
the  large  fortunes  in  Atlanta  have  come  chiefly  from  the  labor 
chain-gangs  or  convicts  leased  from  the  State."  It  was  from  this 
vast  reservoir  of  unfortunate  human  beings  that  Williams  drew 
most  of  his  labor  and  from  which  the  feudal  barons  forming 
the  oligarchy  to  which  he  belonged,  still  draw  theirs  at  the 
astounding  figure  of  from  $5  to  $11  per  head  per  year  with  the 
guarantee  that  for  each  laborer  that  dies  another  will  be  fur 
nished  without  added  expense.  Others  are  procured  by  paying 
them  out  of  their  difficulties  with  the  law.  The  incalculable 
advantage  accruing  to  the  barons  from  the  mathematically  pre 
cise  operations  of  such  reprehensible  profit  making  machines 
signalize  most  surprisingly  a  degree  of  intelligence  of  and  a 
firm  grasp  on  the  inverted  ethics  of  capitalistic  exploitation  that 
is  ordinarily  looked  for  in  the  large  industrial  spheres  of  the 
North,  West  and  Middle  West  where  the  wage-slave  is  found 
instead  of  the  peon.  They  reason  that  since  no  one  can  safely 


166  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

predict  what  nature  of  crop  the  season  will  bring  out,  or  that 
it  will  bring  any  crop  at  all,  it  is  infinitely  more  profitable  to 
reduce  Negroes  and  poor  whites  to  peonage  via  the  contract 
habit,  paying  jail  fines,  or  hiring  them  from  the  convict  camps 
than  it  is  to  hire  them  legitimately  all  year  round  at  50  cents 
per  day.  There  are  certain  responsibilities  incident  to  the  latter 
which  it  is  no  part  of  the  tyrannical  planter's  economic  tempera 
ment  to  assume  willingly.  Peonage  alone  is  the  key  to  the  prob 
lem  and  that  problem  is  to  reap  profits  without  unnecessary 
taxation. 

The  rapacious  exploitation  of  ignorant  Negroes  and  poor 
whites  in  the  South  purely  in  response  to  an  unquenchable 
appetite  for  abnormal  economic  gain  by  an  almost  negligible 
group  of  agricultural  lords  whose  avaricious  and  far-flung 
influence  envelops  and  subverts  the  active  police  agencies  within 
and  around  their  communities  is  not  totally  new.  It  is  but  the 
fruits  sprung  from  seeds  planted  deeply  in  the  soil  of  the  old 
slavery;  fruits  nurtured,  nevertheless,  by  the  same  capitalistic 
method  of  production  and  distribution  that  nurtured  the  old 
slavery.  The  conviction  of  Williams,  therefore,  for  any  benefits 
he  derived  from  them  may  be  encouraging  to  every  person  who 
desires  and  asks  that  the  Negro  receive  a  squarer  deal  every 
where,  but  it  cannot  be  regarded  as  exceptionally  vital  in  uproot 
ing  peonage,  which  is  undoubtedly  economic,  no  more  than  the 
maintenance  of  hospitals  and  coffee  houses  by  the  State  can  be 
regarded  as  a  useful  instrument  in  abolishing  wage  slavery.  The 
causes  must  be  removed. 


FRUITS  OF  PEONAGE1 

Forced  labor  is  tolerated  today  because  it  is  generally  con 
ceived,  in  many  parts  of  the  country,  that  its  only  alternative 
would  be  an  idleness  far  more  demoralizing  than  the  sporadic 
abuses  of  compulsion.  In  the  South  it  is  widely  believed  that 
a  large  part  of  the  Negro  population  will  not  work  steadily 
without  the  application  of  some  kind  of  compulsion.  And  men 
who  do  not  work  steadily  whatever  their  race  are  regarded  by 
sober  citizens  as  a  menace.  The  menace  is  much  more  keenly 
felt  when  the  problem  is  complicated  by  a  race  issue.  Hence 

1  New   Republic.     26:223-4.     April   20,    1921. 


THE   NEGRO   PROBLEM  167 

the  popular  approval  of  a  scheme  of  wages  payment  which 
never  leaves  the  Negro  worker  means  enough  to  maintain  him 
self  in  idleness,  of  a  scheme  of  tenancy  which  keeps  him  perpet 
ually  chained  up  with  debt,  and  of  an  administration  of  the 
vagrancy  laws  which  makes  it  hazardous  for  a  Negro  workman 
to  remain  long  outside  of  the  protection  of  an  employer.  The 
average  citizen  approves  the  result,  a  Negro  population  held 
pretty  steadily  to  regular  employment,  and  does  not  waste  much 
thought  on  the  means.  Nor  does  he  inquire  minutely  into  the 
material  advantages  that  flow  to  the  employers  and  traders  and 
large  landholders  from  a  system  which  reproduces  the  condi 
tions  of  mediaeval  serfdom.  At  least  he  does  not  inquire  except 
when  some  incidental  atrocity  strikes  his  attention,  and  even 
then  he  is  most  likely  to  be  drawn  off  the  track  by  the  search 
for  personal  guilt. 

The  system  of  forced  labor  is  essentially  a  continuation  of 
the  system  of  slavery.  Neither  war  nor  constitutional  amend 
ments  abolish  the  essentials  of  slavery.  Those  essentials  will 
not  be  abolished  merely  by  enacting  a  new  law,  nor  by  more 
rigidly  enforcing  existing  laws.  Nothing  will  change  the  situa 
tion  except  the  substitution  of  the  incentives  of  free  labor  for  the 
compulsion  that  goes  with  labor  that  is  unfree. 

Where  the  conditions  of  life  have  been  reasonably  fair  the 
Negro  has  shown  himself  quite  capable  of  responding  to  the 
incentives  of  free  labor.  His  progress  in  the  accumulation  of 
property  has  been  notable,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  almost  every 
where,  South  or  North,  he  has  found  the  dice  loaded  against 
him.  He  has  also  made  notable  progress  in  the  trades  and  the 
professions,  in  spite  of  every  disability.  But  the  Negroes  as  a 
race  can  not  be  expected  to  exhibit  the  economic  stability  of 
other  classes  until  they  are  freed  from  the  operation  of  special 
disabilities  in  the  economic  field. 

It  may  appear  at  first  sight  that  the  plantation  owner  or 
merchant  who  maintains  a  paternal  relation  to  his  hands  or  cus 
tomers,  taking  care  that  they  never  actually  want,  but  exerting 
steady  pressure  on  them  to  keep  them  at  work,  has  no  part  in 
the  atrocities  that  are  committed  in  the  course  of  the  exploit 
ation  of  the  Negro.  He  has  indeed,  no  direct  part.  But  the 
more  smoothly  he  manages  his  Negro  dependents  the  more 
successfully  he  combats  every  tendency  toward  independence 
and  the  development  of  incentives  that  will  keep  the  Negro 


i68  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

industrious  though  free.  The  more  genuine  his  benevolence,  the 
more  plausible  is  it  made  to  seem  that  the  Negro  race  will  fare 
best  under  a  condition  of  permanent  dependence.  Dependence, 
however,  means  peonage ;  and  peonage  produces  sporadically, 
but  not  rarely,  such  outrages  as  that  of  Jasper  County. 

It  is  asserted  by  men  of  Southern  origin  that  the  Negro's 
best  friends  are  the  Southern  white  men.  Sentimentally  that  is 
certainly  true.  Whether  they  are  good  friends  in  any  other  than 
a  sentimental  sense  can  be  put  to  a  simple  test.  Are  they 
willing  to  see  the  Negroes  make  progress  toward  genuine 
economic  independence?  Will  they  see  that  he  is  not  over 
charged  on  his  supplies,  taxed  exorbitant  rates  of  interest,  that 
property  he  acquires  is  as  secure  in  his  hands  as  any  property 
under  the  law?  In  so  far  as  they  do  these  things,  they  are 
working  toward  a  state  in  which  such  an  institution  as  a  "murder 
plantation"  will  be  unthinkable. 


EDUCATION 

THE  EDUCATION  OF  THE  SOUTHERN  NEGRO ' 

The  education  of  Negroes  in  our  section  of  the  country 
began  long  before  the  Revolutionary  War,  when  they  were 
brought  as  slaves  into  the  Southern  Colonies.  Not  a  few  of 
them  were  taught  to  read  and  write  by  Southern  white  women 
and  children,  many  a  wife  of  a  slave-owner  taking  an  unfeigned 
interest  in  this  philanthropic  work.  It  has  been  estimated  that, 
about  the  time  of  the  opening  of  the  Civil  War,  10  per  cent 
of  the  adult  slaves  had,  by  the  benevolent  offices  of  their  white 
owners,  been  elevated  out  of  the  class  of  illiterates. 

Negroes  who  had  obtained  their  freedom,  either  by  gift  or 
by  purchase,  enjoyed  educational  privileges  to  an  even  greater 
degree.  It  is  true  that,  after  the  Revolutionary  War  and  after 
the  adoption  of  the  constitution  and  establishment  of  the  national 
government,  there  existed  in  some  of  the  Southern  states  statu 
tory  provisions  against  the  education  of  Negroes,  even  free 
Negroes.  To  cite  one  example:  Mrs.  Margaret  Douglass,  who 
lived  in  Norfolk,  Virginia,  was,  in  1853,  arrested  for  teaching  a 
school  attended  by  free  Negro  children,  the  offense  being  "against 
the  peace  and  dignity  of  the  Commonwealth  of  Virginia." 
Being  duly  tried,  she  was  convicted,  and  a  sentence  of  thirty 
days'  imprisonment  was  imposed  upon  her,  a  punishment  which 
the  trial  judge  declared  was  to  "serve  as  a  terror  to  those  who 
acknowledged  no  rule  of  action  but  their  own  evil  will  and 
pleasure."  Nevertheless,  these  statutory  enactments  denying  the 
privileges  of  schooling  to  the  Negroes,  did  not  arrest  the  develop 
ment  of  the  black  race  in  the  South.  Everywhere  education 
along  many  vocational  lines  was  compulsory.  The  Negro  was 
taught  to  speak,  and  in  many  instances  to  read  and  to  write  the 
English  language,  and  not  infrequently  his  conversation  with 
his  white  master  was  directed  along  lines  both  wholesome  and 

1  From  article  by  William  Seneca  Sutton,  LL.D.,  Dean  of  the  Depart 
ment  of  Education,  University  of  Texas.  Bulletin  of  the  University  of 
Texas.  No.  221.  24p.  March  i,  1912. 


i?o  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

stimulating.  He  was  permitted,  and  even  encouraged,  to  ex 
change  the  traditions  of  African  superstition  for  the  inspiring 
truths  of  the  Christian  religion,  and  to  become  acquainted  with 
the  English  Bible,  the  greatest  of  the  world's  classics. 

When  it  is  remembered  that  the  greater  part,  and  the  more 
substantial  part,  of  education  consists  in  doing,  rather  than  in 
knowing,  in  the  formation  of  right  habits  rather  than  in  the 
memorizing  of  mere  word-forms,  one  easily  reaches  the  conclu 
sion  that  the  educational  regimen  of  the  Negro  prior  to  the  Civil 
War  produced  splendid  results,  arming  him  with  the  intelligence 
and  the  power  that  come  from  the  mastery  of  various  forms  of 
industrial  activity  and  endowing  him  with  the  elemental  habits 
of  civilized  society. 

Whatever  may  have  been  the  sins  of  the  old  South — and 
every  well-informed  Southerner  is  now  willing  to  confess  at 
least  some  of  them,  and  that,  too,  without  any  degree  of  dis 
loyalty—her  development  of  the  Negro  slaves,  as  described 
above,  is  convincing  evidence  of  her  intelligence  and  philanthropy. 
In  those  old  days  the  love  of  money,  which  is  the  root  of  more 
than  one  grievous  evil,  had  certainly  not  taken  possession  of 
our  fathers,  and  had  not  blinded  them  to  the  discharge  of  their 
duties  toward  a  race  which,  in  the  providence  of  God,  had  been 
placed  in  their  keeping. 

During  the  Civil  War  the  education  of  the  Negro,  as  well 
as  of  the  white,  children,  was  sadly  interrupted.  Nevertheless, 
his  experience  in  caring  for  his  master's  family  and  property 
confirmed  some  habits  the  Negro  had  already  acquired.  There 
were,  furthermore,  philanthropic  people  in  the  North  who 
established  some  schools  for  Negroes  who  had  refugeed  to 
Union  camps,  and  the  United  States  Government  also  established 
schools  more  or  less  effectively  in  various  places,  and  provided 
the  means  for  conducting  them.  They  were,  at  best,  most 
elementary  in  their  nature,  and  were  administered  without  either 
expert  teaching  or  supervision. 

Inspired  by  the  efforts  of  the  Emancipation  League  of  Boston 
and  by  other  freedman's  aid  associations,  Congress,  on  March  3, 
1865,  passed  the  bill  which  established  the  Freedman's  Bureau. 
General  Oliver  O.  Howard,  the  commander  of  the  Army  of  Ten 
nessee,  was  appointed  Commissioner,  and,  in  compliance  with  the 
statute,  he  appointed  ten  assistant  commissioners,  who  severally 
had  charge  of  the  ten  districts  into  which  the  South  was  divided. 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  171 

The  work  of  the  Bureau  was  divided  into  four  departments: 
(i)  Land;  (2)  Official  acts  relating  to  labor,  schools,  quarter 
master  and  commissary  supplies;  (3)  Financial  matters;  (4) 
Medical  and  hospital  service.  The  educational  functions-  of  the 
Bureau  were  under  the  general  direction  of  a  special  officer  in 
Washington;  but  the  ten  assistant  commissioners  appointed  su 
perintendents  of  education  to  supervise  the  schools  of  their  re 
spective  districts. 

When  the  Bureau  was  established,  there  were  already  in 
existence  some  schools  attended  by  freedmen  and  refugees. 
Some  of  them  were  day  schools  for  the  younger  Negro  children ; 
others  were  night  schools,  in  which  older  boys  and  girls,  as 
well  as  adults,  were  instructed.  There  were  also  some  indus 
trial  schools,  in  which  women  were  instructed  as  seamstresses, 
and  Sunday-schools,  in  which  the  elements  of  secular  and  re 
ligious  education  were  taught.  The  Bureau  sought  to  cooperate 
with  the  individuals  and  the  benevolent  associations  by  whom 
these  schools  had  been  founded. 

Still  greater  powers  relating  to  education  were  given  to  the 
Bureau  by  the  act  of  July  16,  1866,  the  Commissioner  being  di 
rected  to  lease  buildings  for  school  purposes  whenever  teachers 
and  means  of  instruction  could  be  provided  without  cost  to  the 
government,  and  he  was  to  furnish  such  protection  as  might  be 
required  for  the  safe  conduct  of  these  schools.  Congress  appro 
priated  $521,000.00  for  school  expenses,  and  also  provided  addi 
tional  funds  to  be  derived  from  the  sale  and  lease  of  property 
which  had  formerly  belonged  to  the  Confederate  Government, 
but  which  the  United  States  had  acquired  by  confiscation  or 
otherwise.  Another  act,  passed  June  24,  1868,  directed  that  all 
unexpended  balances  in  the  hands  of  the  Commissioner,  not  re 
quired  for  the  due  execution  of  the  law,  might,  in  his  discretion, 
be  devoted  to  the  education  of  freedmen  and  refugees. 

In  1872  the  Bureau  was  abolished  by  law ;  its  work  had  ceased 
to  be  effective  in  1870,  the  last  year  for  which  Congress  granted 
it  an  appropriation.  In  the  year  last  named  the  Bureau  received 
reports  from  2677  day  and  night  secular  schools,  in  which  were 
3300  teachers  and  about  150,000  pupils,  and  from  1562  Sunday- 
schools  with  6007  teachers  and  about  100,000  pupils. 

It  is  easy  to  demonstrate  that  the  efforts  of  the  Commissioner 
and  his  subordinates  to  educate  the  Negroes  in  the  South  were 
far  from  successful.  The  greater  part  of  the  instruction  given 


172  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

was  confined  to  exceedingly  elementary  phases  of  education,  and 
th'e  instruction,  itself,  was  too  often  decidedly  poor  in  quality. 
The  Negro  scholastic  population  in  the  South  in  1870  was  nearly 
1,700,000,  while  only  about  150,000  were  in  the  secular  schools. 
With  less  than  one-tenth  of  the  children  at  school,  with  almost 
the  entire  adult  Negro  population  grossly  ignorant,  with  teachers 
ill-prepared  for  their  duties,  the  education  of  the  Negro  was  in 
an  exceedingly  crude,  not  to  say  lamentable,  condition.  In  this 
connection,  however,  one  should  not  forget  that  the  ravages  of 
war  and  the  even  more  grievous  afflictions  visited  upon  the 
South  during  the  days  of  Reconstruction,  made  it  well-nigh  im 
possible  to  establish  an  efficient  system  of  public  education  for 
her  white  children,  not  to  speak  of  the  children  of  the  former 
slaves. 

Dr.  J.  L.  M.  Curry,  who  was  a  valiant  Confederate  soldier, 
who  was  for  many  years  general  agent  of  the  trustees  of  the 
Peabody  fund,  who  was  the  consistent  and  courageous  friend  of 
the  Negro,  and  whose  name  is  a  household  word  in  educational 
circles  in  the  South,  thus  sums  up  the  value  of  the  educational 
work  of  the  Bureau: 

I  "What  was  done  locally  and  individually  was  almost  univer- 
'  sally  short-lived  and  in  utter  misapprehension  of  conditions  and 
methods." 

The  same  mistake  was  made  in  education  as  in  the  political 
treatment  of  the  South — the  powers  in  control  overlooked  the 
fact  that  the  first  indispensable  requirement  for  success  in  any 
social  undertaking  is  a  thorough  understanding  of  the  conditions 
that  obtain.  On  this  point  Booker  T.  Washington,  one  of  the 
really  great  leaders  of  his  race,  remarks,  "Men  have  tried  to  use 
with  these  simple  people  just  freed  from  slavery  and  with  no 
past,  no  inherited  traditions  of  understanding,  the  same  methods 
of  education  which  they  have  used  in  New  England,  with  all  its 
inherited  traditions  and  desires." 

The  Bureau  should  surely  not  be  held  entirely  responsible  for 
the  mistaken  policy  which  resulted  in  giving  the  Negro  a  mere 
smattering  of  culture,  for  the  teachers  and  the  benevolent  so 
cieties  very  largely  determined  the  methods  actually  employed, 
the  Bureau's  activities  being  confined  chiefly  to  the  financial 
side  of  the  difficult  problem,  the  annual  amounts  distributed  for 
educational  purposes  ranging  from  $27,000  in  1865  to  more  than 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  173 

$1,000,000  in  1870,  and  the  total  sum  apportioned  from  June  I, 
1865,  to  September  I,  1871,  being  more  than  $5,000,000. 

While  it  is  true  that  the  schools  under  the  control  of  the 
Bureau  could  not,  by  any  grace  of  courtesy  be  regarded  as  effi 
cient,  yet  there  is  unquestioned  evidence  that  its  work  emphasized 
the  necessity  for  elementary  education,  that  it  demonstrated 
the  importance  of  systematic  administration,  and  that  it  aided 
in  the  development  of  public  opinion  in  the  direction  of  higher 
education,  especially  for  the  men  and  women  to  be  employed  as 
teachers.  It  is  in  the  higher  institutions,  such  as  Fisk  Univer 
sity,  Howard  University  and  Hampton  Institute,  the  founding 
of  which  was  encouraged  by  the  Bureau,  and  in  similar  institu 
tions  founded  since  1870,  that  the  Southern  Negro  finds  oppor 
tunity  to  fit  himself  for  genuine  service. 

Public  education  for  the  Negro  at  public  expense  in  the  sev 
eral  Southern  states  during  the  era  of  Reconstruction  requires 
no  extended  treatment,  for,  while  the  constitution  adopted  by 
the  carpetbag  governments  included  articles  relating  to  the  or 
ganization  and  conduct  of  systems  of  public  free  schools,  these 
educational  measures  did  not  become  effective.  The  antipathy 
of  the  Southern  people  to  the  rule  of  the  carpetbaggers  inspired 
resistance,  both  passive  and  active,  to  educational,  as  well  as  to 
other  governmental  policies  the  Reconstructionists  attempted  to 
establish.  The  free  schools  were  generally  regarded  by  the 
white  man  as  part  and  parcel  of  that  system  which  sought  to 
enslave  him  and  place  him  under  the  domination  of  his  former 
slaves  and  their  abolition  friends.  The  Reconstruction  era. 
which  was  responsible  for  more  evils  and  which  engendered 
fiercer  passions  and  more  deep-seated  prejudices  than  the  Civil 
War,  was  fortunately  brought  to  a  close  early  in  the  seventies  of 
the  last  century,  and  the  people  of  our  common  country,  North 
and  South,  are  now  practically  unanimous  in  the  opinion  that 
the  effort  to  restore  the  Union  by  reducing  one-half  of  its  people 
to  a  state  of  vassalage  and  by  seeking  to  keep  them  in  subjection 
by  force,  was  the  greatest  political  blunder  made  by  the  party 
that  had  been  victorious  in  war,  and  had  destroyed  the  institu 
tion  of  slavery  in  the  United  States. 

When  the  white  people  in  each  of  the  Southern  states  regained 
their  liberty  and  took  charge  of  their  own  State  governments, 
they  at  once  began  the  stupendous  task  of  providing  for  a  system 


174  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

of  public  free  schools,  and,  to  their  credit  be  it  said,  oppor 
tunities  for  free  education  were  extended  to  whites  and  blacks 
alike,  at  least  so  far  as  constitutional  and  statutory  measures 
are  concerned.  It  is  true  that,  immediately  after  the  close  of  the 
Reconstruction  era,  there  was  some  opposition  to  popular  educa 
tion,  especially  for  Negroes;  yet  the  public  school  idea  steadily 
won  its  way,  and  today  no  people  in  the  wide  world  are  more 
devoted  to  the  democratic  ideal  manifested  in  public  education 
at  public  expense  than  are  to  be  found  in  America  south  of 
Mason  and  Dixon's  line.  Nowhere  does  there  exist  a  stronger,  a 
more  militant  conviction  that  the  safety  and  perpetuity  of  democ 
racy  is  dependent  upon  popular  intelligence  and  virtue.  The 
South  is  today  irrevocably  committed  to  the  doctrine  that,  as 
President  Lamar  once  wrote  in  a  message  to  the  Congress  of  the 
Republic  of  Texas,  "cultivated  mind  is  the  guardian  genius  of 
democracy.  It  is  the  only  dictator  which  freemen  acknowledge 
and  the  only  security  which  freemen  desire." 

Thirty  or  forty  years  is  a  very  short  time  in  the  life  of  a 
people,  and  it  is  an  exceedingly  brief  period  in  the  evolution  of 
a  great  institution  like  a  system  of  public  education.  The 
South,  however,  in  this  short  space  of  time  has  accomplished 
educational  results  that  are,  indeed,  not  far  from  marvelous. 
The  testimony  to  support  this  view  is  strong  and  abundant.  The 
late  United  States  Commissioner  of  Education,  Dr.  William  T. 
Harris,  declared  at  a  National  Congress  of  Education,  held  in 
Atlanta,  Georgia,  in  1895,  that  "the  Southern  people  in  the  or 
ganization  and  management  of  systems  of  public  schools  manifest 
wonderful  and  remarkable  self-sacrifice." 

Concerning  educational  advantages  supplied  to  the  Negro, 
competent  witnesses  living  North,  as  well  as  South,  men  of 
African,  as  well  as  of  Caucasian,  descent,  are  agreed  that 
in  all  the  history  of  the  world  there  has  been  no  higher  mani 
festation  of  justice  and  liberality  by  a  superior  to  an  inferior 
race  than  the  South  has  shown  in  its  efforts  to  improve  the 
intellectual  condition  of  the  black  population.  Of  the  many 
men  who  have  spoken  on  this  point  is  Dr.  Lyman  Abbott,  editor 
of  The  Outlook.  Below  I  give  this  opinion,  an  opinion  which 
is  typical,  and  which  is  to  be  found  in  an  article  written  by 
him  and  published  in  Volume  83,  pp.  634-639  of  that  journal: 

"While  Northern  benevolence  has  spent  tens  of  thousands  of 
dollars  in  the  South  to  educate  the  Negroes,  Southern  patriotism 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  175 

has  spent  hundreds  of  thousands  of  dollars  for  the  same  pur 
pose.  This  has  been  done  voluntarily  and  without  aid  from  the 
Federal  Government." 

Out  of  their  poverty  the  Southern  states  have  contributed 
millions  of  dollars  to  educate  the  Negroes.  It  is  impossible  to 
determine  the  exact  amount  of  this  expenditure,  because  sepa 
rate  accounts  for  Negro  education  have  not  been  kept  by  the 
several  state  governments.  In  only  two  or  three  of  the  states 
are  they  so  kept  at  this  time.  The  state  of  Texas,  from  1870  to 
the  close  of  the  scholastic  year  ending  August  31,  1911,  ex 
pended  upon  common  school  education  for  Negroes  about 
$23,500,000,  and  for  the  support  of  the  Prairie  View  Normal 
School,  an  institution  for  the  training  of  Negro  teachers,  there 
has  been  expended  since  1879,  $715,382.  The  estimated  value  of 
school  houses  and  school  property  used  by  the  Negro  schools  of 
that  state  is  $1,500,000,  the  greater  portion  of  which  was  derived 
from  taxes  paid,  and  from  donations  made,  by  white  citizens. 
In  the  state  of  Virginia  there  has  been  spent  since  1871  between 
fifteen  and  eighteen  millions  of  dollars  upon  the  common  school 
education  of  the  Negro,  and  that  state  is  now  spending  about 
$600,000  a  year  therefor. 

The  figures  given  for  Texas  and  Virginia  may  be  properly 
regarded  as  fairly  representative  of  all  the  Southern  states. 
Not  one  of  these  states  has  failed  to  provide  for  common  school 
education  for  Negroes  on  substantially  equal  terms  with  the 
whites,  and  in  addition,  normal  schools  have  been  founded  and 
maintained  in  order  that  competent  teachers  may  be  trained 
for  work  in  the  Negro  schools.  In  a  letter  I  received  'some 
days  ago  from  Monroe  N.  Work,  who  is  in  charge  of  the  De 
partment  of  Research  and  Records  in  the  Tuskegee  Normal 
and  Industrial  Institute,  he  estimates  that  the  amount  devoted 
to  Negro  education  in  the  South  for  the  forty  years  'ending  with 
the  academic  session  of  1910-11  is,  approximately,  one  hundred 
and  sixty-six  millions  of  dollars.  When  it  is  remembered  that 
the  Negroes  own  a  very  small  per  cent  of  the  taxable  property 
in  the  South,  the  figures  given  above  are  convincing  evidence 
of  the  sincere  desire  of  the  Southern  white  man  to  give  to 
the  Negro  the  blessings  of  at  least  a  common  school  educa 
tion.  It  should,  furthermore,  be  remembered  that,  while  the 
Negro  schools,  even  today,  are  not  as  efficient  as  they  should 
be,  and  while  many  of  the  Negro  children  are  not  matriculated 


1 76  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

in  even  these  inferior  schools,  the  public  schools  for  the  white 
children,  especially  in  rural  districts,  are  themselves  far  from 
ideal.  There  is  reason  for  believing,  however,  that  in  the  full 
ness  of  time,  with  the  continuance  of  that  progress  which 
forms  a  bright  page  in  the  educational  history  of  our  country, 
the  public  schools  for  blacks,  as  well  as  whites,  will  function 
with  such  efficiency  as  will  guarantee  reasonably  satisfactory 
results. 

TASK  OF  THE  LEADER1 

Many  of  our  sincerest  spokesmen  were  persuaded  that  there 
was  no  anti-Negro  feeling  in  the  demand  that  the  Negro 
should  be  excluded  from  the  suffrage.  They  knew  that  the 
illiterate  vote  should  be  restricted,  and  while  they  were  aware 
that  the  movement  of  restriction  might  exclude  many  of  the 
intelligent,  they  thought  the  exclusion  of  the  intelligent  less 
disastrous  than  the  continued  admission  of  the  ignorant.  They 
sincerely  desired  to  end  the  excuses  for  violence  and  fraud 
by  establishing  all  the  conditions  of  suffrage  under  the  forms 
of  law;  and  they  seriously  believed  that  if  the  Negro  could 
be  "excluded  from  politics"  the  chief  occasion  of  public  appre 
hension  would  be  so  completely  dispelled  that  the  popular 
temper  would  do  larger  justice  to  the  Negro  educationally  and 
industrially.  These  men  were  convinced  that  if  the  fear  of  the 
Negro's  vote  were  once  removed  the  prevailing  attitude  toward 
the  black  population  would  be  more  sympathetic  and  more 
helpful.  Their  sincerity  and  earnestness  are  unquestionable. 
But  the  campaign  for  suffrage  limitations  became,  upon  the 
hustings,  far  different  from  the  campaign  which  they  had  con 
ceived  in  their  committee  rooms.  It  soon  degenerated,  for 
the  most  part,  into  an  anti-Negro  agitation  in  which  the  wiser 
and  kindlier  spirits  were  forced  to  give  place  to  the  masters  of 
diatribe,  and  in  which  a  movement  toward  justice  for  the  white 
race  became  changed  into  a  movement  of  hatred  and  op 
pression  to  the  black.  There  were  creditable  and  notable  ex 
ceptions ;  but  no  reader  of  the  press  of  the  period  and  no 
attendant  on  the  average  political  gathering  could  fail  to  miss 

1  From  article  bv  Edgar  Gardner  Murphy,  Montgomery,  Ala.  Sewanee 
Review.  15:1-30.  January,  1907. 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  17? 

the  fact  that  a  sincere  effort  for  an  indispensable  social  re 
form  had  been  captured  by  the  demon  of  racial  animosities. 

The  reform  will  work  its  benefits,  but  the  demon  has  never 
been  appeased.  No  sooner  had  the  new  laws  been  enacted 
than  the  cry  arose,  "Down  with  the  Negro  school !"  The 
passage  of  the  suffrage  regulations,  so  far  from  resulting  in 
a  more  general  willingness  to  afford  the  Negro  an  educational 
opportunity,  has  been  followed  by  an  attack  on  practically  every 
privilege  he  possesses.  Let  me  hasten  to  say  that  these  attacks 
have  thus  far  been  unsuccessful.  The  deeper  heart  and  the 
better  sense  of  the  South  have  offered  overwhelming  resis 
tance.  And  yet  the  proposal  to  take  from  the  Negro  public 
schools  all  revenues  save  the  Negro's  meagre  contribution  in 
direct  taxes  is  everywhere  in  the  air.  The  suggestion  has  been 
advocated  by  the  Governor  of  one  State;  in  two  other  States 
it  has  passed  one  or  both  houses  of  the  legislature.  It  is  un 
constitutional  in  the  judgment  of  the  Supreme  Court  of  two 
of  our  own  commonwealths  of  the  South;  it  is  impracticable, 
as  there  is  no  way  to  fix  a  racial  division  of  the  receipts  and 
taxes  of  corporations  (such  as  railroads)  ;  it  is  unjust  inas 
much  as  in  countless  cases  the  rents  upon  the  lands  (out  of 
which  the  taxes  are  paid)  are  contributed  by  Negro  tenants — 
the  rents  pay  the  taxes  and  the  negro  pays  the  rents ;  it  is 
un-American,  inasmuch  as  our  institutions  do  not  anywhere 
draw  their  revenues  from  direct  taxation  only.  Indirect  taxa 
tion  must  be  taken  into  account — or  the  poor  would  be  every 
where  unschooled.  The  proposal  represents,  however,  no 
serious  legislative  or  educational  policy.  It  is  merely  the  ex 
pression  of  an  anti-negro  sentiment.  Its  agitation  is  a  political 
expedient.  That  it  may  be  enacted  in  some  of  our  Southern 
States  is  not  impossible,  but  it  will  be  found  unconstitutional 
and  unworkable;  and  its  significance  will  not  be  educational 
but  racial — a  symptom  of  that  relentless  passion  of  our  lower 
selves — a  passion  which  under  like  occasions  has  leaped  to  ut- 
terence  at  the  North — which  is  ever  saying,  in  the  sequence 
of  its  logic,  the  Negro  shall  have  no  vote;  the  Negro  shall 
have  no  school;  the  Negro  shall  have  no  work;  the  Negro 
shall  have  no  existence  on  this  soil. 

For  the  attack  has  not  ceased  with  the  denial  of  educa 
tional  opportunities.  Those  who  attacked  the  political  posi 
tion  of  the  Negro  were  sure  that  education  and  industry  would 


i?8  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

be  left  to  him.  Those  who  have  opposed  the  black  man's 
school  have  said— at  this  point  we  will  rest  in  our  advance. 
The  Negro  should  not  be  educated;  he  should  work;  we  will 
destroy  his  schools,  but  we  will  protect  him  in  his  work.  Here 
again,  however,  the  demon  that  lurks  within  the  social  antip 
athies  of  men  will  not  allow  its  votaries  to  say,  "Thus  far  and 
no  farther."  The  animus  against  the  Negro  as  a  laborer  is 
slowly  but  surely  invading  us  from  the  North.  It  finds  its 
lodgment  in  rich  soil.  It  will  be  echoed  with  increasing  volume 
as  our  changes  of  population,  coincident  with  the  changes  in 
our  industrial  situation,  bring  into  the  South  still  more  of  the 
white  labor  of  our  industrial  and  agricultural  classes.  Thus 
the  demon  of  our  divisive  fate,  having  said  to  the  Negro,  you 
shall  not  vote,  you  shall  not  know,  you  shall  not  labor,  and 
having  made  honorable  life  impossible,  why  should  it  not  also 
say,  you  shall  not  Jive?  In  fact  and  in  effect,  has  it  not  been 
already  said,  in  spirit  and  in  intent,  by  hundreds  North  and 
South? 

For  it  is  idle  to  pretend  to  bestow  life,  when  all  that  gives 
life   significance  has  been   destroyed. 


CAN  THE  NEGRO  BE  EDUCATED?1 

The  South  is  convinced  that  the  two  races  must  not  be  edu 
cated  together  in  the  same  schools.  Apparently  the  Northern 
teachers  working  in  the  South  entertain  the  same  opinion.  With 
very  rare  exceptions,  they  educate  their  children  while  young  in 
their  own  homes,  and  as  soon  as  the  children  reach  a  suitable 
age  send  them  North  to  white  schools  for  their  education.  In 
this  the  Southern  conviction  and  the  Northern  practice  are  both 
founded  on  a  sound  principle.  On  this  principle  missionaries  in 
pagan  lands  have  generally  acted,  sending  as  early  as  practic 
able  their  children  to  America  to  school  and  college.  Education 
is  not  all  furnished  by  teachers  and  text-books.  More  potent 
than  both  combined  in  influence  upon  the  character  is  school 
companionship.  Whatever  the  future  may  have  in  store  for  us, 
at  present  the  children  of  Negro  parents  are  generally  not  such 
as  exert  an  elevating  influence  upon  white  companions.  Slavery 
would  not  be  the  evil  thing  which  now  practically  all  Americans 

1  From  article  by  Lyman  Abbott.  Outlook.  117:602-4.  December  12, 
1917. 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  179 

believe  it  to  have  been  if  the  children  of  slave  parents  were 
the  best  companions  for  the  children  of  an  always  free  people. 
In  towns  and  cities  the  'existence  of  separate  schools  for  the 
two  races  is  not  accompanied  with  very  great  disadvantages, 
for  in  the  towns  and  cities  there  is  generally  a  sufficient 
number  of  the  people  of  each  race  to  give  each  school  a  fairly 
adequate  support.  But  in  rural  communities  this  is  not  the  case. 
The  necessity  for  two  schools,  where  the  school  population  and 
the  school  income  are  barely  sufficient  to  give  adequate  support 
to  one  school,  is  a  serious  handicap  to  the  community.  The 
money  is  rarely  enough  for  one  good  school;  when  divided 
between  two,  it  furnishes  poor  buildings,  poor  teachers,  and 
short  school  terms.  Nor  is  the  money  always  equitably  divided. 
The  State  school  funds  are  apportioned  to  counties  and  cities 
on  the  basis  of  population,  without  reference  to  race.  The  school 
officers  in  the  counties  supplement  the  State  appropriation  by 
the  proceeds  of  the  local  tax,  and  then  divide  the  State  and 
local  taxes  between  the  races  according  to  their  own  interpreta 
tion  of  the  needs  of  each  group.  In  counties  where  the  propor 
tion  of  Negro  population  is  small  the  amount  is  fairly  equally 
divided  between  the  two;  but  where  the  Negro  population  is 
large  such  division  would  leave  the  white  children  almost  unpro 
vided  for.  The  inevitable  result  is  that  the  Negro  children  are 
almost  unprovided  for.  In  the  fifteen  States  and  the  District  of 
Columbia  for  which  the  amount  paid  in  teachers'  salaries  for 
the  schools  of  each  race  could  be  obtained,  a  comparison  of  the 
amounts  shows  $10.32  for  each  white  child  and  $2.89  for  each 
colored  child.  Without  attempting  to  determine  how  far  this 
disproportion  is  the  fault  and  how  far  it  is  only  the  misfortune 
of  the  Southern  States,  it  is  certainly  a  misfortune  for  the 
Negro  children,  and  one  that  can  be  cured  only  by  either  pri 
vate  charity  or  National  appropriations. 

The  great  missionary  movement  in  the  North  to  provide  for 
the  education  of  the  Negro  race  in  the  South  has  therefore 
certainly  been  called  for,  and  as  certainly  should  be  continued. 
To  criticise  a  movement  which  has  been  inspired  by  such  gen 
erosity  and  sustained  and  carried  on  by  such  patient  and  con 
tinuous  self-sacrifice  may  seem  to  some  of  my  readers  hyper 
critical.  But  one  may  applaud  the  splendid  spirit  which  has 
inspired  this  great  movement  without  being  blind  to  the  defects 


i8o  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

which  have  unfortunately  accompanied  it.  Every  Christian 
denomination  has  had  its  agency  working  in  the  South  for  the 
education  and  elevation  of  the  Negro  race,  but  they  have 
worked  without  a  common  plan  or  any  effective  cooperation. 
In  some  localities  they  have  multiplied  competing  educational 
agencies,  while  other  localities  have  been  left  unprovided  for. 
With  a  zeal  not  always  directed  by  good  judgment,  they  have 
tried  to  do  everything  at  once.  They  have  endeavored  to  trans 
plant  from  the  North  a  complete  system  of  education,  including 
everything  from  the  kindergarten  to  the  university.  But  out  of 
a  list  of  thirty-three  institutions  bearing  the  name  of  college  or 
university  we  are  told  that  only  three  "have  student  bodies, 
teaching  force  and  equipment,  and  income  sufficient  to  warrant 
the  characterization  of  'college.' " 


NEGRO  EDUCATION  * 

For  Negro  education  as  for  white,  but  perhaps  with  more 
reason,  it  is  urged  that  the  federal  government  ought  to  come  in 
with  its  powerful  aid.  The  argument  somewhat  res-embles  that 
of  the  blind  Chinese  beggar  who  was  sent  to  the  hospital  where 
he  recovered  his  sight,  and  then  insisted  that,  having  lost  his 
livelihood,  he  must  be  made  porter  to  the  hospital.  Aside  from 
any  claim  to  right,  it  is  true  that  the  problem  of  elevating  the 
Negroes  concerns  the  whole  nation,  and  is  a  part  of  the  long 
process  of  which  emancipation  was  the  beginning.  Federal  aid 
for  colored  schools,  however,  can  never  be  brought  about  with 
out  the  consent  of  the  Southern  states,  and  they  are  not  likely 
to  ask  for  or  to  receive  educational  funds  intended  solely  for 
the  Negroes;  while  Northern  members  of  Congress  are  not 
likely  to  vote  for  taxing  their  constituents  who  already  pay  two 
or  three  times  as  much  per  capita  for  education  as  the  South,  in 
order  to  make  up  the  deficiencies  of  the  other  section.  It  is 
impossible  to  discover  any  way  in  which  federal  aid  can  be  given 
to  the  Negroes  without  reviving  sectional  animosity,  and  it  is  a 
fair  question  whether  such  gifts  could  be  so  hedged  about  that 
they  would  not  lead  to  a  corresponding  diminution  in  the  amount 
spent  by  the  Southern  states.  The  Government  grants  to  state 

1  From  The  Southern  South,  by  Albert  Bushnell  Hart,  Professor  of  His 
tory,  Harvard  University.  Chap.  22-23.  Copyright  by  D.  Appleton  &  Co. 
New  York.  1910. 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  181 

agricultural  colleges  and  experiment  stations  inure  almost 
wholly  to  the  advantage  of  the  Whites;  if  a  part  of  that  money 
could  be  devoted  to  the  education  of  the  Negro,  it  might  be 
helpful. 

The  first  objection  to  Negro  education  is  that  the  race  is 
incapable  of  any  but  elementary  education  and  that  all  beyond 
it  is  wasted  effort.  Has  the  Negro  as  a  race  an  inferior  intel- 
lectuaL<i»a4ity,  a  disability  to  respond  to  opportunities  ?  With  all 
the  effort  to  educate  the  race,  and  with  due  regard  to  the  fact  that 
the  proportion  who  can  read  and  write  is  rapidly  rising,  the 
Negroes  are  alarmingly  ignorant,  the  most  illiterate  group  in 
the  whole  United  States;  and  therefore  they  need  special  atten 
tion.  In  addition,  they  are  subjected  to  the  smallest  degree  of 
home  training,  and  enjoy  the  smallest  touch  with  those  concen 
trated  forces  of  public  opinion  which  force  the  community 
upward. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  history  of  the  last  thirty-five  years 
proves  conclusively  that  the  great  mass  of  Negro  children  can 
assimilate  the  ordinary  education  of  the  common  schools.  Mr. 
Glenn,  recently  Superintendent  of  Education  in  Georgia, 
declares  that  "the  Negro  is  ...  teachable  and  susceptible  to 
the  same  kind  of  mental  improvement  characteristic  to  any 
other  race,"  and  Thomas  Nelson  Page  admits  that  the  "Negro 
may  individually  attain  a  fair,  and  in  uncommon  instances  a 
considerable  degree,  of  mental  development."  About  three- 
fourths  of  the  young  people  have  already  learned  to  read. 
— Many  people  intimately  acquainted  with  the  race  assert  that, 
although  about  as  quick  and  receptive  as  white  children  up 
to  twelve  or  fourteen  years  of  age,  the  Negro  children  ad 
vance  no  further;  that  their  minds  thenceforward  show  an 
arrested  development.  Certainly  anyone  who  visits  their 
schools,  city  or  rural,  public  or  private,  is  struck  with  the  slow 
ness  of  the  average  child  of  all  ages  to  take  in  new  impres 
sions,  and  with  the  intellectual  helplessness  of  many  of  the 
older  children.  Whether  this  is  due  to  the  backwardness  of 
the  race,  or  to  the  uncouthness  of  home  life,  or  to  the  want 
of  other  kinds  of  stimulus  outside  of  school,  is  hard  to  deter 
mine.  That  there  is  any  general  arrested  development  is  con 
tradicted  by  thousands  of  capable  youths,  mulatto  and  full-blood. 

The  very  slowness  of  the  black  children  is  a  reason  for 
giving  them  the  best  educational  chance  that  they  can  take 


182  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

That  is  why  the  Southern  Education  Association  which  met 
in  1907  passed  a  unanimous  resolution  that:  "We  endorse 
the  accepted  policy  of  the  States  of  the  South  in  providing  edu 
cational  facilities  for  the  youth  of  the  Negro  race,  believing  that 
whatever  the  ultimate  solution  of  this  grievous  problem  may 
be,  education  must  be  an  important  factor  in  that  solution." 

Another  point  of  view  is  represented  by  the  statement  of 
Thomas  Nelson  Page  that  the  great  majority  of  the  Southern 
Whites  "unite  further  in  the  opinion  that  education  such  as 
they  receive  in  the  public  schools,  so  far  from  appearing  to 
uplift  them,  appears  to  be  without  any  appreciable  beneficial 
effect  upon  their  morals  or  their  standing  as  citizens."  Governor 
Vardaman,  of  Mississippi,  as  late  as  1908  recommended  the 
legislature  to  strike  out  all  appropriations  for  Negro  schools  on 
the  ground  that  "Money  spent  today  for  the  maintenance  of  the 
public  school  for  Negroes  is  robbery  of  the  white  man  and  a 
waste  upon  the  Negro.  It  does  him  no  good,  but  it  does  him 
harm.  You  take  it  from  the  toiling  white  men  and  women ;  you 
rob  the  white  child  of  the  advantages  it  would  afford  him,  and 
you  spread  it  upon  the  Negro  in  an  effort  to  make  of  the  Negro 
that  which  God  Almighty  never  intended  should  be  made,  and 
which  man  cannot  accomplish."  He  asserts  that  the  most  serious 
Negro  crime  is  due  to  "The  manifestation  of  the  Negro's 
aspiration  for  social  equality,  encouraged  largely  by  the  charac 
ter  of  free  education  in  vogue,  which  the  State  is  levying 
tribute  upon  the  white  people  to  maintain." 

A  superintendent  of  schools  in  a  Southern  city  holds  that 
even  grammar  school  education  unsteadies  the  boys  so  that  they 
leave  home  and  drift  away ;  though  he  candidly  acknowledges 
that  it  keeps  the  girls  out  of  trouble  and  provides  a  respectable 
calling  as  teachers  to  many  Negro  women. 

Side  by  side  with  this  feeling  of  disappointment  or  hos 
tility,  as  the  case  may  be,  is  the  conviction  of  most  South 
ern  people  that  enormous  sacrifices  have  been  made  for  the 
Negro  schools.  The  estimate  of  the  Bureau  of  Education  is 
that  in  the  thirty-five  years  since  1870  about  $155,000,000  has 
been  spent  to  support  common  schools  for  the  Negro  race,  which 
is  about  a  fifth  of  the  amount  spent  on  the  white  common  schools 
in  the  same  period,  and  not  a  hundredth  of  the  supposed  present 
wealth  of  the  South ;  in  addition,  heavy  expenditures  are 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  183 

made  out  of  the  public  treasury  for  secondary  and  higher  edu 
cation  in  which  the  Negro  has  a  slender  share. 

Another  more  specious  complaint  with  regard  to  Negro 
education  is  that  it  is  an  unreasonable  burden  on  the  Whites 
to  make  them  pay  lor  Negro  education,  and  repeated  at 
tempts  have  been  made  to  lay  it  down  as  a  principle  that  the 
Negroes  shall  have  for  the  schools  only  what  they  pay  in 
taxes.  Thus  Governor  Hoke  Smith,  of  Georgia,  says :  "Is  it 
not  folly  to  tax  the  people  of  Georgia  for  the  purpose  of  con 
ducting  a  plan  of  education  for  the  Negro  which  fails  to 
recognize  the  difference  between  the  Negro  and  the  white 
man?  Negro  education  should  have  reference  to  the  Negro's 
future  work,  and  especially  in  the  rural  districts  it  is  prac 
ticable  to  make  that  education  really  the  training  for  farm 
labor.  If  it  is  given  this  direction  it  will  not  be  necessary  to  tax 
the  white  man's  property  for  the  purpose.  A  distribution  of 
the  school  fund  according  to  the  taxes  paid  by  each  race  would 
meet  the  requirements." 

This  point  of  view  involves  a  notion  of  the  purpose  of 
education  and  the  reason  for  public  schools  so  different  from 
that  which  animates  the  North  that  it  is  hard  to  deal  with  the 
question  impartially  Massachusetts  makes  the  largest  expen 
diture  per  capita  of  its  population  in  the  whole  Union,  almost 
the  largest  expenditure  per  pupil,  and  certainly  the  largest  ex 
penditure,  except  the  more  populous  states  of  New  York, 
Pennsylvania,  Illinois,  and  Ohio ;  Massachusetts  spends  on 
schools  two-fifths  as  much  every  year  as  all  the  fifteen  former 
slaveholding  states  put  together.  In  that  state  people  think  that 
school  taxes  are  not  money  spent  but  money  saved :  that  they 
get  back  every  cent  of  their  $17,000,000  a  year,  several  times 
over,  in  the  increased  efficiency  of  the  people,  in  the  diminution 
of  crime,  in  the  addition  to  the  happiness  of  life.  Schooling 
is  insurance,  schooling  is  the  savings  bank  that  can't  break, 
schooling  is  that  same  kind  of  poor  relief  which  prevents 
poverty.  The  last  thing  which  any  Massachusetts  community 
thinks  of  reducing  is  school  expenditure ! 

Furthermore,  no  principle  is  so  ingrained  in  the  North 
ern  mind  as  that  since  education  is  for  the  public  benefit,  every 
taxpayer  must  contribute  in  proportion  to  his  property.  The 
rich  corporations  in  New  York  or  Pittsburgh,  childless  old 


184  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

couples,  bachelor  owners  of  great  tracts  of  real  estate,  wealthy 
bondholders  educating  their  children  in  private  schools,  never 
dream  of  disputing  the  school  tax  on  the  ground  that  they,  as 
individuals,  make  no  demands  on  the  school  fund. 

Still  less  would  it  enter  the  mind  of  any  Northern  com 
munity  to  divide  itself  into  social  classes,  each  of  which 
should  maintain  its  own  schools.  Such  a  proposition  would 
go  near  to  bring  about  a  revolution.  First  of  all,  the  non- 
taxpayer  is  a  taxpayer ;  it  is  the  pons  asinorum  of  finance 
that  the  poor  are  more  heavily  taxed  in  proportion  to  their 
means  than  any  other  class  of  the  community,  through  indirect 
taxes  and  the  enhanced  rents  of  the  real  estate  which  they 
occupy.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  all  the  taxes  eventually  paid  by 
the  Negroes  in  the  South  probably  amount  only  to  a  third 
or  a  half  of  the  three  millions  or  so  spent  upon  their  schools. 
What  of  that?  Are  the  Southern  states  the  only  communities 
in  the  country  in  which  a  comparatively  small  part  of  the 
population  pays  most  of  the  taxes;  it  is  altogether  probable  that 
in  Boston  or  New  York  the  payers  of  nine-tenths  of  the  taxes 
do  not  furnish  one-tenth  of  the  school  children.  Who  educates 
the  Irish,  German,  Italian,  Jewish,  Greek,  and  Syrian  children 
of  those  cities?  The  well-to-do  part  of  the  community,  and  it 
likewise  is  educating  the  Negroes  principally  for  the  advantage 
does  it  uncomplainingly,  with  its  eyes  open,  gladly.  The  South 
of  the  white  race,  for  the  efficiency  of  the  whole  region  in 
which  the  Whites  have  the  greatest  stake,  and  from  which  they 
derive  the  greater  benefit,  material  and  moral. 

A  hot  discussion  has  raged  as  to  which  of  the  two  systems 
is  most  necessary  to  the  Negro.  The  champions  of  the  academic 
side  dwell  upon  the  right  of  the  Negro  to  the  same  type  of 
education  as  the  white  man.  In  many  white  minds  lies  a 
lurking  feeling  that  academic  training  leads  to  discontent  with 
present  conditions;  that  industrial  training  is  more  likely  to 
bring  about  contentment  with  the  things  that  are.  In  fact,  both 
types  are  most  necessary.  The  fifty  millions  poured  into  the 
South  by  Northern  generosity  would  have  been  worth  while  if 
they  had  done  no  more  than  maintain  a  Hampton  which  could 
train  a  Booker  Washington.  His  ideas  of  thrift,  attention  to 
business,  building  decent  houses,  putting  money  into  banks,  are 
ideals  specially  needed  by  the  Negro  race ;  but  they  also  need  the 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  185 

DuBois  ideal  of  a  share  in  the  world's  accumulated  learning; 
of  the  development  of  their  minds;  of  preparation  to  educate 
their  fellows.  That  a  supply  must  be  kept  up  of  people  acquainted 
with  the  humanities,  having  some  knowledge  of  literature,  able 
to  express  themselves  cogently,  competent  to  train  the  succeed 
ing  generations,  is  as  true  for  the  Negro  race  as  for  any  other; 
if  it  is  a  low  race  it  has  the  greater  need  for  high  training  for 
its  best  members. 

In  the  last  analysis  most  of  the  objections  to  Negro  educa 
tion  came  down  to  the  assertion  that  it  puts  the  race  above  the 
calling  where-unto  God  hath  appointed  it.  The  argument  goes 
back  to  the  unconscious  presumption  that  the  Negro  was  created 
to  work  the  white  man's  field,  and  that  even  a  little  knowledge 
makes  him  ambitious  to  do  something  else. 

On  the  side  of  the  Negro  there  are  other  complaints.  One 
is  that  his  education  has  not  had  a  fair  trial;  that  the  dom 
inant  South  which  lays  and  expends  the  taxes  has  not  dealt 
with  the  Negro  on  an  equal  footing  with  white  children;  that 
the  per  capita  expenditure  on  the  black  children  in  school  is 
probably  not  more  than  a  third  of  that  for  white  children ;  that 
the  Negro  schools  have  often  been  exploited  by  white  politicians 
who  have  put  in  their  own  favorites  as  teachers ;  that  even  where 
the  best  intentions  prevail,  the  schools  are  manned  by  incom 
petent  teachers;  nowhere  do  the  rural  colored  people  enjoy  an 
education  to  a  degree  and  with  the  kind  of  teachers  and  ap 
pliances  common  in  the  country  districts  of  the  North;  the 
race  can  hardly  be  spoiled  by  education,  for  it  has  never  had  it, 
not  for  a  single  year.  Only  about  a  third  of  the  Negro  children 
are  at  school  on  a  given  school  day.  Few  of  their  rural  schools 
hold  more  than  five  months,  many  not  more  than  three,  some 
not  at  all,  and  not  over  sixty  to  one  hundred  days  in  the  year, 
irregularly  placed,  with  teachers  on  the  average  not  competent 
for  the  exceedingly  elementary  work  that  they  do,  the  wonder 
is  that  children  ever  go  a  second  day  or  acquire  the  rudiments 
of  learning;  yet  many  of  them  learn  to  read  fluently,  to  write 
a  good  hand,  and  to  do  simple  arithmetical  problems.  A  race 
must  have  some  intellectual  quickness  to  pick  up  anything  much 
with  such  a  poor  system.  The  arguments  in  favor  of  Negro 
education  have  so  far  been  convincing  to  every  Southern  com 
munity,  since  Negro  common  schools  are  maintained  and  con 
siderable  amounts  are  spent  for  secondary  and  higher  education. 


i86  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

4 

The  arguments  against  Negro  education  destroy  each  other; 
they  assume  both  that  the  Negro  is  too  little  and  too  much 
affected  by  the  education  that  he  receives.  On  one  side  we  are 
told  that  he  is  incapable  of  anything  more  than  the  rudiments; 
on  the  other  side,  that  education  is  a  potent  force  making  the 
Negro  dangerous  to  the  world.  The  incompetent  can  never  be 
made  dangerous  by  training  into  competence.  Education  can 
not  change  the  race  weaknesses  of  the  Negro ;  but  it  can  give  a 
better  chance  to  the  best  endowed.  ^  v 

NATIONAL  RESPONSIBILITY  FOR  EDUCATION 
OF  THE  COLORED   PEOPLE1 

We  are  likely  to  be  misled  by  statistics  of  illiteracy  showing 
the  remarkable  rapidity  with  which  the  Negro  is  acquiring  the 
use  of  letters.  Beginning  practically  at  the  zero  point  of 
literacy,  at  the  time  of  his  emancipation,  the  rate  of  literacy 
had  arisen  to  70.6  per  cent  in  1910.  The  rapidity  with  which 
the  Negro  race  has  progressed  in  literacy  has  been  considered 
the  most  marvelous  attainment  of  the  past  century.  In  the 
period  of  fifty  years  a  considerable  majority  of  its  members 
have  learned  the  use  of  .letters.  This  is  a  much  larger  percentage 
than  is  shown  by  many  of  the  historic  races  of  the  Old  World. 

Altho  70  per  cent  of  the  Negro  race  can  read  and  write,  com 
paratively  a  small  fraction  of  that  number  actually  make  an 
efficient  use  of  their  attainments.  In  the  states  which  require  a 
literacy  test  for  the  exercise  of  franchise  a  great  majority  of 
Negroes  are  excluded  because  of  their  inability  to  meet  this 
simple  test,  albeit  the  statistics  of  such  states  show  a  high 
average  of  Negro  literacy.  Statistics  of  illiteracy  are  misleading 
because  the  individual  pride  which  indisposes  him  to  have  his 
ignorance  acknowledged  and  recorded  often  leads  the  Negro  to 
render  a  misleading  answer  to  the  query  of  the  enumerator. 

At  Camp  Dodge,  where  there  were  thirty-six  hundred  Negro 
conscripts  from  Alabama,  no  one  of  whom,  under  the  terms  of 
conscription  was  over  thirty-one  years  of  age,  the  Young  Men's 
Christian  Association  found  that  over  50  per  cent  of  them  were 
unable  to  read  or  write,  notwithstanding  the  fact  that  the  rate 

1  By  Kelly  Miller,  Dean  of  Howard  University,  Washington,  D.  C. 
National  Education  Association.  Proceedings.  1918:555-8. 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  187 

of  Negro  illiteracy  in  Alabama,  according  to  the  federal  statistics 
is  only  41.1  per  cent.  There  is  one  conspicuous  outstanding 
fact,  that  the  great  majority  of  the  Negro  race  are  not  able  to 
make  use  of  literary  knowledge  to  improve  their  efficiency,  or 
measure  up  to  the  standard  of  an  enlightened  citizenship. 

When  we  consider  the  woeful  inadequacy  of  provision  made 
for  Negro  education  there  is  left  no  room  to  marvel  because 
of  this  alarming  result.  According  to  reports  just  issued  by 
the  Bureau  of  Education,  the  state  of  Alabama  expends  $1.78 
per  capita  for  each  Negro  child,  the  state  of  Georgia  $1.76  and 
Louisiana  $1.31.  These  states  expend  from  five  to  six  times  this 
amount  per  capita  for  the  schooling  of  white  children.  It  is 
conceded  that  even  the  provision  for  the  education  of  the  white 
children  of  the  south  is  scarcely  more  than  one-third  of  that 
for  the  education  of  a  child  in  the  North  and  West.  If,  for 
the  duties  of  citizenship  in  the  North,  it  requires  $25  per  capita 
to  prepare  a  white  child  whose  powers  are  reinforced  by  racial 
and  social  heredity,  by  what  law  or  logic  or  common  sense  can  it 
be  expected  that  $1.31  will  prepare  a  Negro  child  in  Louisiana, 
who  misses  such  reinforcement  for  the  exercise  of  like  functions? 

Without  national  aid  to  Negro  education  the  Southern  States 
must  continue  for  generations  under  the  heavy  handicap  of  a 
comparatively  ignorant  and  ill-equipped  citizenship. 

It  is  a  fatal  mistake  to  suppose  that  the  efficient  education 
of  the  Negro  can  be  conducted  on  a  cheaper  scale  than  that  of 
the  whites.  The  fact  that  his  home  environment  and  his  general 
grade  of  life  are  lower,  makes  adequate  educational  facilities  all 
the  more  expensive. 

Philanthropy,  to  a  commendable  degree  has  served  to  supple 
ment  the  deficiencies  of  the  Southern  States  for  Negro  education. 
But  neither  the  individual  state  nor  the  United  States  has  the 
moral  right  to  depend  upon  voluntary  philanthropy  to  prepare  its 
citizens  for  the  responsible  duties  and  obligations  of  citizenship. 
At  best,  philanthropy  is  only  a  temporary  and  inadequate  make 
shift.  As  high  as  philanthropic  contribution  seems  to  be  in  the 
aggregate,  it  amounts  to  little  more  than  one  dose  of  medicine 
in  the  hospital,  when  compared  to  the  magnitude  of  the  task  to 
which  it  is  applied. 

It  was  unfair  to  the  Southern  States  to  require  them,  unaided 
to  prepare  the  Negro  for  duties  of  citizenship  at  the  time  of 
his  enfranchisement.  The  nation  as  a  whole  was  responsible 


i88  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

for  the  condition  of  the  Negro.  The  fact  that  slavery  became 
a  localized  institution  was  not  due  to  the  inherent  deviltry  of 
the  South  nor  to  the  innate  goodness  of  the  North.  Slavery 
was  a  national  institution  and  became  localized  under  the  opera 
tion  of  climatic  and  economic  law.  It  is  equally  unfair  today 
to  require  the  South  to  bear  the  heavy  burden  alone.  The  Negro 
problem  is  the  nation's  problem ;  the  remedy  should  be  as  com 
prehensive  as  the  need. 

So  far  I  have  dealt  with  the  demands  for  federal  assistance 
to  primary  and  elementary  education,  which  imparts  to  each 
citizen  a  more  or  less  well-understood  minimum  of  necessary 
knowledge  and  standard  of  efficiency.  But  there  is  a  higher 
sense  in  which  the  nation  is  obligated  to  the  cause  of  Negro 
education.  At  the  time  of  his  emancipation  the  Negro  was  left 
wholly  without  wise  guidance  and  direction.  The  sudden 
severance  of  the  personal  relation  which  had  existed  com 
placently  under  the  regime  of  slavery  left  the  Negro  dependent 
upon  his  own  internal  resources  for  the  leadership  of  his 
higher  and  better  life.  The  discipline  of  slavery  had  illy  fitted 
him  for  this  function.  It  has  imparted  to  him  the  process 
without  the  principle,  the  knack  without  the  knowledge,  the 
rule  without  the  reason,  the  formula  without  the  philosophy. 
If  the  blind  lead  the  blind  they  will  both  fall  into  the  ditch. 
For  want  of  vision  people  perish.  The  professional  class  con 
stitutes  the  higher  light  of  the  race,  and  if  that  light  within  this 
race  be  darkness,  how  great  is  that  darkness. 

The  federal  government  should  make  some  provision  for 
those  who  are  to  stand  in  the  high  places  of  intellectual  and 
moral  authority.  In  the  Western  States,  where  philanthropical 
millionaires  are  scarce  and  where  the  average  citizen  is  not 
able  to  support  the  system  of  education  on  the  higher  level, 
the  state  undertakes  the  task  of  maintaining  higher  institu 
tions  of  learning  for  the  leaders  in  the  various  walks  of  life. 
The  Negro  is  unable  at  present  to  maintain  such  institutions 
for  his  own  race;  he  is  dependent  upon  a  remote  and  vicarious 
philanthropy. 

Already  thru  land-grant  and  other  federal  funds,  the  govern 
ment,  in  cooperation  with  the  several  states,  is  supporting  agri 
cultural  and  mechanical  colleges  for  white  youth.  Some  pro 
vision  is  also  made  for  the  Negroes  in  the  states  where  there 
is  scholastic  separation  of  the  races.  But  these  agricultural 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  189 

and  mechanical  colleges  are  essentially  schools  of  secondary 
grade  and  cannot  be  maintained  on  a  high  level  of  collegiate 
basis.  It  is  easy  for  the  federal  government  to  extend  the 
application  by  establishing  and  maintaining  at  least  one  insti 
tution  of  technical  character  and  collegiate  grade  which  might 
serve  as  a  finishing  school  for  the  work  done  in  the  several 
states.  The  Negro  needs  to  be  rooted  and  grounded  in  the 
principles  of  knowledge  on  the  highest  collegiate  basis.  The 
federal  government  has  already  acknowledged  this  responsi 
bility  in  the  moderate  support  which  it  gives  to  Howard  Uni 
versity  as  the  national  institution  of  the  Negro  race.  This 
acknowledgement  of  a  national  responsibility,  let  us  hope,  augurs 
early  ample  provision  for  the  education  of  a  race  in  its  up 
ward  struggle  to  the  stature  of  American  citizenship. 


PROGRESS  IN  THE  EDUCATION  OF  THE 
NEGRO 1 

The  history  of  Negro  education  in  the  United  States  has 
been,  until  recently,  largely  the  story  of  the  planting  of  schools 
and  colleges  in  the  South  by  Northern  missionaries,  such  as 
the  agents  of  the  Freedmen's  Bureau,  the  American  Missionary 
Association,  etc.,  and  their  sustenance  and  varying  success 
through  Northern  benevolence.  Not  unnaturally,  these  pioneer 
teachers  were  commonly  regarded  by  the  white  Southerners  as 
uninvited  foreigners,  meddlesome  interlopers,  and  general 
trouble-makers,  who  spoiled  good  field  hands  and  contented 
house  servants  by  putting  foolish  notions  into  their  heads.  Yet, 
in  spite  of  prejudice  and  opposition,  the  "Yankee"  teachers 
held  their  ground,  and  have  done  their  share  in  gradually  con 
vincing  the  thoughtful  people  of  the  South  that  the  Negro 
must  be  educated;  that,  as  Dr.  J.  L.  M.  Curry,  himself  a  Con 
federate  soldier,  tersely  remarked,  ignorance  is  not  a  cure  for 
anything;  that  the  illiterate  Negro  is  a  menace  to  his  commun 
ity;  that  if  people  do  not  know  enough  to  avoid  the  con 
taminations  of  disease  and  vice,  they  will  frequently  become 
diseased  and  vicious,  and  thus  the  carriers  and  disseminators 
of  every  kind  of  evil. 

Tt    is    now    increasingly   perceived   that   the    Negro    race   has 

1  By  James  Z.   Gregg.    Weekly  Review.     3:52-3.     July   14,    1920. 


IQO  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

always  had  and  always  will  have  its  own  leaders;  and  that  the 
better  trained  these  leaders  are,  intellectually  and  morally,  the 
better  for  their  race,  for  the  South,  and  for  the  nation.  Ac 
cordingly,  such  institutions  as  Fisk  at  Nashville,  Howard  at 
Washington,  Shaw  at  Raleigh,  Spelman  and  Morehouse  at  At 
lanta,  and  Hampton  and  Tuskegee  Institutes  have  won  a 
measure  of  Southern  sympathy  and  support  which  was  denied 
to  them  in  the  earlier  days.  Still  further,  in  the  field  of  pub 
lic  education,  the  support  given  to  Negro  schools  from  the  tax 
funds  is  distinctly  more  generous  than  it  used  to  be.  The  dis 
tribution  of  public  money  for  school  purposes  is  still  regret 
tably  unequal,  the  per  capita  expenditure  in  the  Southern  States 
for  white  children  being  four  times  that  for  colored  children 
($10.32:  $2.89). 

But  the  tide,  happily,  is  turning;  with  the  encouragement 
and  help  of  the  General  Education  Board,  the  Slater  Fund, 
the  Jeanes  Fund,  the  Phelps-Stokes  Fund,  the  Daniel  Hand 
Fund  (administered  by  the  American  Missionary  Association), 
and  similar  agencies,  a  great  broadening  and  deepening  of  the 
whole  work  of  Southern  Negro  education  is  in  progress,  and 
the  States,  counties,  and  municipalities  of  the  South  are  appro 
priating  larger  and  larger  sums  for  the  maintenance  of  colored 
public  schools.  Lake  Charles,  Louisiana,  not  long  ago  voted 
school  bonds  to  an  amount  of  $200,000,  of  which  $150,000  are 
to  be  spent  for  the  improvement  of  Negro  schools.  The  larger 
cities  of  the  South  are  ceasing  to  depend  wholly  upon  denomi 
national  and  other  private  institutions  for  the  providing  of 
secondary  instruction  for  Negroes,  and  one  after  another  are 
establishing  colored  high  schools.  The  Jeanes  Fund,  whose 
special  object  is  the  aiding  of  small  rural  colored  schools,  par 
ticularly  through  the  employment  of  "supervising  industrial 
teachers"  who  visit  the  schools  and  homes  of  their  counties,  is 
expending  this  year  (1919-20)  $47,634,  to  which  the  public 
authorities  are  adding  for  the  same  purposes  $44,813.  These 
county  supervising  teachers  introduce  simple  home  industries 
such  as  matweaving,  the  making  of  rudimentary  house  furni 
ture,  needlework,  better  cooking,  etc. ;  give  lessons  in  sanitation 
and  personal  cleanliness;  encourage  the  painting  and  white 
washing  of  houses,  barns,  and  fences,  the  improvement  of 
school  houses  and  school  grounds,  the  extension  of  school 
terms  (which  are  often  not  more  than  four  or  five  months), 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  191 

gardening,  clubs  for  pig  raising,  canning,  and  many  other 
worthy  purposes.  They  are  commonly  the  leaders  in  every 
enterprise  for  community  betterment;  in  1918-19  they  raised  for 
various  school  improvements  no  less  than  $324,896.  This  year 
there  are  210  of  them  in  204  counties  of  13  Southern  States, 
not  including  65  other  counties  where  similar  work  is  now 
being  maintained  without  the  assistance  of  the  Jeanes  Fund. 

The  Slater  Fund  in  like  manner  cooperates  with  the  public 
school  authorities  in  the  maintenance  of  the  so-called  "county 
training  schools,"  which  are  rural  high  schools  emphasizing 
industrial  training.  The  first  three  of  these  schools  were  estab 
lished  in  1911-12.  There  were  seventy  last  year;  there  are  one 
hundred  seven  this  year;  next  year  there  will  probably  be  one 
hundred  fifty.  This  year  the  Slater  Fund  is  contributing  for 
salaries  in  these  county  training  schools  $53,060;  and  the  public 
authorities  $239,252. 

The  General  Education  Board  is  giving  liberally  toward  the 
equipment  of  these  county  training  schools  ($61,290  in  1919-20)  ; 
it  supplements  the  resources  of  the  Jeanes  Fund,  aids  some 
fifty  summer  schools  for  Negro  teachers,  contributes  annually 
to  about  sixteen  colored  colleges  and  normal  schools,  and  provides 
the  salaries  of  the  State  agents  for  rural  colored  schools  in 
Maryland,  Virginia,  Kentucky,  Tennessee,  North  Carolina,  South 
Carolina,  Georgia,  Florida,  Alabama,  Mississippi,  Louisiana, 
Arkansas,  and  Texas.  These  State  agents  are  representative 
white  men  of  progressive  spirit,  appointed  by  the  State  govern 
ments  and  working  under  the  State  superintendents  of  public 
instruction.  They  are  responsible  for  the  care  and  improve 
ment  of  the  Negro  rural  schools,  and  have  a  large  influence 
for  good.  In  one  way  and  another  the  General  Education 
Board  is  disbursing  almost  a  million  dollars  annually  for  the 
benefit  of  Negro  education. 

The  income  of  the  Daniel  Hand  Fund  is  expended  under 
the  direction  of  the  officers  of  the  American  Missionary  Asso 
ciation  for  the  maintenance  of  its  various  schools  and  colleges 
for  Negroes. 

The  Phelps-Stokes  Fund  has  expended  more  than  half  of 
its  income  for  objects  connected  with  Negro  education.  Among 
these  are  the  preparation  and  publication  in  cooperation  with 
the  United  States  Bureau  of  Education  of  the  exhaustive  and 
authoritative  Report  on  Negro  Education  by  Dr.  Thomas  Jesse 


192  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

Jones,  issued  in  two  volumes  in  1916  (Bulletins  38  and  39  of 
the  Bureau  of  Education)  ;  the  establishment  of  fellowships  at 
the  University  of  Virginia  and  the  University  of  Georgia  for 
the  study  of  Negro  sociology;  the  gift  of  $10,000  to  the  George 
Peabody  College  for  Teachers  at  Nashville  to  promote  "direct 
and  helpful  contact  with  the  actual  work  of  representative 
institutions  of  Negro  education";  and  financial  assistance  of  the 
Southern  University  Race  Commission,  the  Southern  Publicity 
Committee,  and  other  organizations  engaged  in  constructive 
work  for  the  betterment  of  interracial  relations. 

Mention  should  also  be  made  of  the  generous  gifts  of  Julius 
Rosen wald,  of  Chicago,  particularly  those  for  the  erection  of 
a  better  type  of  Negro  school  house.  In  1914,  Mr.  Rosenwatcl 
offered  to  give  a  sum  not  exceeding  $300  to  any  community 
toward  the  cost  of  a  new  school  building  for  colored  children, 
provided  the  people  of  the  community,  out  of  public  or  private 
funds,  should  raise  an  equal  sum.  Under  this  plan,  up  to  June 
i,  1919,  751  school  houses  had  been  built  in  eleven  Southern 
States  at  a  cost  of  several  hundred  thousand  dollars. 

The  Smith-Hughes  law  for  the  promotion  of  vocational 
training  and  the  Smith-Lever  law  for  the  support  of  "extension 
work"  (i.e.  instruction  in  agriculture  and  home  economics  out 
side  the  schools)  are  operating  with  increasing  effectiveness  for 
the  benefit  of  the  Negroes  in  the  rural  districts.  Those  persons 
who  are  most  familiar  with  the  conditions  realize  that  the  chief 
hope  of  the  South,  so  far  as  its  agricultural  prosperity,  is  con 
cerned,  lies  in  increasing  the  efficiency  of  its  Negro  farm  labor. 
This  means  not  only  more  and  better  education  in  the  schools, 
but  a  general  lifting  of  the  standards  of  household  life.  Another 
serious  need,  to  which  Monroe  N.  Work  of  Tuskegee  has 
recently  called  attention,  is  that  of  more  careful  provision  for 
the  education  of  the  large  Negro  population  that  is  neither 
strictly  rural  nor  urban,  being  gathered  in  incorporated  towns 
and  villages  of  less  than  2,500  people.  There  are  more  than  3,000 
of  these  quasi-urban  communities  in  the  South,  containing  at 
least  a  third  of  the  whole  number  of  Negro  children  living 
below  Mason  and  Dixon's  line. 

Several  especially  hopeful  signs  may  be  noted  in  conclusion. 
First,  the  old  antagonism  between  industrial  and  classical  edu 
cation  is  fading  away.  People  now  understand  more  commonly 
that  the  majority  of  every  race  need  to  be  trained  for  skillful 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  193 

handwork  and  also  to  be  given  such  discipline  of  the  mind  and 
conscience  as  shall  insure  thoughtfulness  and  trustworthiness. 
This  statement  obviously  carries  the  corollary  that  in  every  race 
the  especially  talented  minority  should  rise  into  the  professions 
of  teaching,  preaching,  law,  medicine,  engineering,  etc.,  and 
that  for  their  work  they  too  should  be  well  trained.  Second, 
the  Negroes  themselves  are  supporting  and  improving  their 
schools  and  colleges,  public  and  private,  with  remarkable  gen 
erosity,  energy,  and  intelligence.  The  progress  in  this  respect 
which  has  been  made  within  the  past  five  years  is  surprising. 
Third,  the  best  white  people  of  the  South,  as  of  the  North,  are 
giving  proof  of  their  belief  in  Negro  education  by  their  deeds 
as  well  as  by  their  words. 


THE  HIGHER  EDUCATION  OF  THE  NEGRO  1 

"Education  is  leading  souls  to  what  is  best  and  making  what 
is  best  out  of  them,"  says  Ruskin.  So  also  Emerson:  "Man  is 
an  endogenous  plant,  and  grows  like  the  palm,  from  within 
outward;  his  education,  his  life,  are  his  unfolding."  If  God  is 
the  author  and  maker  of  men,  it  certainly  must  be  the  natural 
thing,  the  Christian  thing,  to  draw  forth,  to  help  unfold  all 
that  is  highest  and  most  august  in  every  man — physical,  intel 
lectual,  moral.  And  this  evolution  of  the  man ;  this  making  ready 
of  the  whole  man  for  his  best  in  life  in  however  lowly  a 
sphere,  is  what  we  mean  by  the  higher  education. 

The  Negro  is  a  man.  Therefore,  educate  him  as  a  man.  Do 
not  force  education  upon  him.  Do  not  veneer  him.  Simply  open 
the  door  to  highest  opportunity  in  the  intellectual  life.  Let 
him  have  a  man's  chance. 

The  capacity  of  the  Negro  for  the  higher  education  has  been 
settled.  We  have  learned,  however,  to  distinguish  between  the 
intellectual  capacity  with  which  God  has  endowed  all  races, 
and  the  intellectual  and  moral  equipment  of  a  race  which  is 
the  outcome  of  civilization  and  environment.  The  last  danger 
is  the  over-education  of  the  Negro.  We  have  only  touched  the 
fringes  of  the  race.  His  real  education  is  a  task  of  generations. 

However,  although  the  capacity  of  the  exceptional  Negro  for 

1  By  Wilbur  P.  Thirkield,  D.D.,  LL.D.  President,  Howard  University, 
Washington,  D.C.  Religious  Education.  6:420-3.  December,  19  n. 


194  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

higher  education  has  been  demonstrated,  the  trend  of  opinion 
in  some  quarters  has  set  strongly  away  from  college  education, 
to  elementary  and  industrial  training  for  the  race.  This  may 
furnish  reason  for  setting  forth  at  this  time  some  arguments 
in  favor  of  the  higher  education,  not  as  opposed  to,  but  as 
really  essential  to,  permanent  and  effective  results  in  elementary 
training  and  to  the  industrial  and  civic  future  of  the  race. 

1.  On  the  higher  education  the  very  existence  of  any  educa 
tion  depends.    No  people  will  long  maintain  common  schools  for 
primary  education,   that  does  not  possess  and   sustain   colleges 
for  the  higher  education.     The  fountain  head  of  learning  is  not 
the  common  school,  but  the  college.     The  college  not  only  fur 
nishes  the  trained  teacher,  but  gives  motive  and  inspiration  for 
the   common   school.     Without  these   trained   teachers,   millions 
expended  by  the  State  for  public  education  must  largely  go  to 
waste. 

The  Negro  is  fast  becoming  his  own  teacher.  The  common 
schools  in  every  Southern  State  are  now  largely  under  his 
control  and  direction.  Teachers'  Institutes  are  conducted  by 
him.  Many  of  the  normal  schools,  academies,  and  colleges  are 
now  in  his  hands.  How  imperative,  therefore,  that  men  of 
disciplined  mind  and  tested  scholarship  lead  in  this  epochal 
work  that  is  to  mold  the  thought  and  shape  the  character  of 
the  rising  generation. 

2.  In  the  interest  of  pure  industrialism  for  the  Negro,  this 
higher  training  is  a  necessity.     He  needs  the  best  discipline  of 
his  mental  powers  to  fit  him  for  the  inevitable  era  of  strenuous 
competition  in  the  South,  with  which  he  must  soon  battle. 

If  the  Negro  is  to  hold  his  own,  he  must  have  behind  his 
brawny  hand  and  strong  right  arm,  the  trained  mind  to  direct 
the  hand,  and  the  disciplined  soul  to  control  the  arm  for  highest 
issues.  Is  every  Negro  to  be  forever  content  to  remain  a 
hewer  of  wood  and  never  a  drawer  of  dividends?  Is  every 
Negro  to  be  ever  led  and  never  a  leader? 

For  his  leaders  and  teachers  in  the  industries,  this  discipline 
of  mind  and  spirit  is  imperative.  To  train  the  mechanics  of 
a  race  of  nine  millions,  is  an  endless  task.  But  it  is  possible  to 
train  the  master  mechanics,  who  may  go  forth  with  thoroughly 
disciplined  minds,  as  the  teachers  of  mechanics,  and  as  the 
organizers  and  inspirers  of  their  people  on  higher  industrial 
lines. 


THE  NEGRO   PROBLEM  195 

Besides  all  this,  even  the  industrial  schools,  for  which  we 
may  well  plead  as  essential  to  the  equipment  of  a  race  for  the 
struggle  of  life  on  a  footing  of  equality  of  opportunity  with 
other  races,  are  dependent  for  their  teachers  upon  the  colleges 
which  offer  the  higher  training  to  the  exceptional  men  and 
women  of  the  race.  Nearly  all  of  the  most  effective  mem 
bers  of  the  faculty  in  the  most  famous  of  these  industrial 
schools  in  the  South,  are  graduates  of  the  colleges  which 
have  given  opportunity  for  their  equipment  as  teachers. 

3.  The  higher  education  is  necessary  for  the  raising  up  of  a 
trained  leadership  for  the  race.  The  words  of  Dr.  Henry 
Drummond  are  especially  applicable  to  the  Negro  at  this  time: 
"God  is  all  for  quality;  man  is  for  quantity.  But  the  im 
mediate  need  of  the  world  at  this  moment  is  not  more  of 
us,  but,  if  I  may  use  the  expression,  a  better  brand  of  us. 
To  secure  ten  men  of  an  improved  type  would  bd  better  than 
if  we  had  ten  thousand  of  the  average  Christians  distributed 
all  over  the  world."  Ten  Negroes  of  an  improved  type  can 
do  more  for  their  race — and  that  means  for  humanity — than 
ten  thousand  average  Negroes  distributed  over  America. 

Every  race  is  dependent  on  its  leaders.  No  race  among  us 
is  so  much  so  as  the  Negro.  For  the  masses  there  are  no 
libraries ;  no  highly  developed  press ;  no  superior  schools ;  no 
large  learned  class.  Therefore,  for  their  opinions,  the  masses 
are  dependent  upon  their  leaders. 

The  Negro  must  either  take  his  opinions  ready-made  from 
the  white  man,  or  be  so  educated  as  to  be  capable  of  originating 
and  enforcing  his  own  opinions.  And  the  leader  needs  to  be 
taught  to  think;  not  to  think  about  things,  but  to  think  through 
things;  to  form  independent  judgments;  to  reach  logical  con 
clusions;  to  know  really  for  himself;  to  achieve  his  destiny; 
to  inspire  and  lead  his  fellows  on  to  larger  life  and  nobler 
usefulness  through  unselfish  service. 

This  small  body  of  men  of  trained  intellect,  of  balanced 
judgment;  the  educators  of  their  fellows,  their  teachers  along 
higher  industrial  lines;  the  keen  students  of  the  sociological 
problems  of  the  race;  the  masterful  defenders  of  the  rights  and 
hopes  of  their  people— these  few  are  to  determine  the  destiny 
of  their  race. 

As  the  result  of  personal  observation,  over  a  score  of  years 
largely  spent  in  the  South,  I  would  affirm  that  the  sanest  and 


ip6  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

safest  leaders  and  helpers  of  the  Negro  race  are  the  men  and 
women  who  have  come  from  our  colleges  and  professional  schools. 
Go  into  any  Southern  city  where  colored  teachers,  preachers, 
and  physicians  are  engaged  in  work  among  their  people,  and 
you  will  find  them,  in  most  instances,  by  their  conservative 
attitude  and  constructive  work,  standing  for  the  best  interests 
of  both  races. 

The  Negro  race  needs  men  of  higher  training  for  the  pro 
fessions.  Broad-minded  men  of  the  South  who  have  the  best 
interests  of  both  races  at  heart,  recognize  this  fact. 

It  must  be  self-evident  that  a  race  of  millions,  of  whom 
thousands  are  gaining  wealth  and  property,  must  have  legal 
advisers  among  their  own  people — lawyers  who  will  teach  them 
to  avoid  litigation  in  which  they  love  to  indulge;  honest,  capable 
lawyers  intent  on  protecting  them  in  their  ignorance  and  help 
ing  them  to  their  rights. 

For  physicians  the  race  needs  the  best  men;  scholarly  men 
with  clear  heads,  trained  faculties,  accurate  judgment,  balanced 
powers.  To  gain  the  confidence  of  their  own  race,  to  com 
mand  the  respect  of  white  physicians,  the  highest  ability  and 
training  are  demanded. 

Furthermore,  the  awful  mortality  of  the  race  calls  loudly  for 
physicians  prepared  by  the  higher  training  for  the  most  careful 
study  of  the  diseases  peculiar  to  the  Negro.  Physicians  who 
come  in  close  touch  with  their  own  people  are  needed  for  the 
investigation  of  their  environment  and  physical  condition,  and 
for  the  application  of  preventives  for  the  lessening  of  disease 
and  for  stopping  the  frightful  mortality  that  decimates  the 
race. 

The  demand  for  a  trained  and  consecrated  ministry  is  im 
perative.  The  most  serious  problem  before  the  race  is  to  hold 
the  progressive,  aspiring  Negroes  of  the  rising  generation  to 
the  Church,  through  a  ministry,  too  large  a  percentage  of  whom, 
according  to  Dr.  Booker  Washington,  are  not  fitted  morally 
or  intellectually  for  that  office.  The  highest  qualities  of  leader 
ship  are  required  to  meet  the  demands  for  the  religious,  civil 
and  social  reforms  that  must  come  for  the  redemption  of 
the  race.  The  minister  is  the  center  of  power.  The  preacher 
now  is  their  constituted  leader.  To  hold  this  leadership  de 
mands  a  ministry  that  proves  by  its  masterful  grasp  and  brave 
treatment  of  all  questions  that  make  for  the  civil  and  moral 


THE   I,EGRO   PROBLEM  197 

uplift  of  the  people,  its  right  to  leadership.  As  teachers  of 
the  Word,  and  as  leaders  of  their  people  into  larger  faith  and 
truth  and  righteousness  of  life,  ministers  of  intellectual  breadth 
and  spiritual  vision  are  needed. 

To    what    extent,    then,    shall    the    higher    education    be    at 
tempted?     We   answer,   only   to   that   extent   that   shall  give  to- 
all  those  who  are  thoroughly  equipped  in  the  preparatory  schools 
and  have  the   ambition  and  the  capacity  for  the  higher  train-  \ 
ing  opportunity  to  unfold  the  best  and  divinest  that  is  in  them.  • 
Say  not   to   any  man   or   set   of   men,   nor  to   any  race:     This 
or  that  kind  of  education  is  good  enough  for  thee  and  thine. 
This    is    unphilosophical,    unjust,    un-American.      Let   the    gates 
to  largest  knowledge  and   culture  be  thrown  wide  open.     Let 
each   man   for   himself   enter.     Set   no   limits.     Let   each   man, 
by  his   active   brain   and    aspiring   soul,    set   his   own   limits. 

And,  further,  let  us  not  forget  that  it  is  only  generations 
of  discipline  and  patient  education  of  the  people  through 
thoroughly  equipped  teachers,  that  will  lift  the  masses  into 
the  larger  and  higher  fellowship  of  the  intellectual  life.  We 
have  too  often  made  the  mistake  of  confounding  the  educa 
tion  of  the  individual  with  the  mental  and  moral  equipment 
of  a  race.  The  teaching  of  sociology  is  that,  while  we  may 
educate  the  individual  in  a  few  years,  the  intellectual  and  moral 
equipment  of  a  race  is  a  question  of  generations,  and  it  may 
be  of  centuries. 


NEGRO  SUFFRAGE 

DISFRANCHISING  THE  NEGRO  x 

The  misery  of  the  South  in  the  decade  following  the  war 
was  largely  trareaijte— to  Negro  suffrage  and,  what  is  more 
significant,  laid  the  foundation  for  successful  attacks  against 
the  whole  policy  of  Negro  suffrage.  The  spectacle  of  the 
South  during  those  years  caused  sober  men  to  wonder  if  de 
mocracy  was  a  failure  and  if  true  democracy  did  really  involve 
universal  suffrage.  And  if  it  did,  was  not  the  price  paid  alto 
gether  too  great  when  measured  in  terms  of  political  vice,  cor 
ruption,  villainy,  and  outrage?  As  things  turned  out  it  seemed 
that  the  term  "democracy"  was  no  less  a  mocking  word  when 
applied  to  southern  commonwealths  dominated  by  thieving,  irre 
sponsible,  hopelessly  ignorant  blacks  than  it  was  in  earlier  times 
when  those  same  blacks  were  slaves. 

An  account  of  this  riot  of  corruption  cannot  be  given 
here.  The  Negroes,  aided  .by  vicious  carpetbaggers  from  the 
North,  got  possession  of  the  state  legislatures,  and  the  powers 
of  the  government  were  prostituted  to  most  unholy  purposes. 
Most  of  the  wrongdoing  consisted  in  various  methods  of  pil 
fering  the  state  treasury  and  exploiting  available  resources. 
But  every  evil  deed  simply  made  more  certain  the  coming 
of  that  reaction  destined  to  drive  the  Negro  from  the  polls. 
His  enfranchisement  had  been  secured  by  artificial  means  and 
not  by  the  normal  process  of  building  up  a  popular  support. 
And  how  very  significant  it  is  that  such  artificial  methods 
were  unable  to  establish  a  condition  that  would  endure! 

It  is  not  proper  to  lay  all  the  unfortunate  results  of  Negro 
suffrage  at  the  door  of  the  Negro.  His  gullibility  and  ignorance 
were  frequently  exploited  by  designing  whites  with  ulterior 
motives.  It  has  been  pointed  out  before  that  many  politicians 
were  no  doubt  seeking  the  good  of  their  party  and  their  own 
political  future  rather  than  abstract  justice  for  the  Negro. 

1  From  History  of  Suffrage  in  the  United  States,  by  Kirk  Harold 
Porter,  p.  191-227.  Copyright  by  the  University  of  Chicago  Press.  1918. 


200  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

Respectable  statesmen,  of  course,  did  not  countenance  the  gross 
corruption  in  the  southern  legislature,  but  they  were  slow  to 
disapprove  the  actions  of  faithful  henchman  such  as  the  Negroes 
proved  to  be. 

In  order  to  maintain  ascendancy  it  was  desirable  and  ex 
pedient  to  keep  the  Negro  from  exercising  the  suffrage.  This 
the  southerner  set  out  to  do  by  various  interesting  methods. 
The  activities  of  the  Ku  Klux  have  been  immortalized  in  book 
and  play.  Less  dramatic  were  the  practices  of  brute  violence 
and  intimidation,  clever  manipulation  of  ballots  and  ballot 
boxes,  the  deliberate  theft  of  ballot  boxes,  false  counting  of 
votes,  repeating,  the  use  of  "tissue"  ballots,  illegal  arrests  the 
day  before  election,  and  the  sudden  removing  of  the  polls. 
All  the  many  expedients  that  clever  men  could  devise  were 
•used  to  render  ineffective  the  attempted  voting  of  the  Negro. 
By  one  means  or  another  the  desire  of  Congress  to  secure  suf 
frage  for  the  Negro  was  utterly  defeated. 

The  South  sought  to  justify  this  process  of  exclusion.  The 
firm  conviction  grew  and  crystallized  in  the  minds  of  the 
southerners  that  the  Negro,  being  of  an  inferior  race,  suffered 
under  a  natural  incapacity  to  perform  political  duties.  Here 
is  found  the  beginning  of  the  Negro  problem  as  it  exists  today. 
The  real  objection  to  Negro  suffrage  was  not  a  dislike  of  an 
ignorant  electorate  but  a  keen  apprehension  that  Negroes  en 
joying  political  power  would  utterly  demoralize  the  state. 
Some  leading  Negroes  have  concurred  in  this  belief  and  have 
urged  their  fellows  not  to  insist  upon  exercising  political  power. 
They  emphasize  the  evil  results  of  Negro  suffrage  and  active 
participation  in  politics  and  deplore  the  fact  that  good  laborers 
and  artisans  are  spoiled  to  make  wretched  politicians.  Another 
purely  utilitarian  consideration  from  the  Negro's  point  of  view 
is  that  he  would  probably  gain  more  in  the  long  run  by  sub 
mitting  to  white  control. 

Another  argument  in  defense  of  the  policy  of  driving  out 
the  Negro  is  developed  by  certain  writers.  It  is  said  that  many 
of  the  better  element  in  southern  states  wanted  the  Negro  dis 
franchised  in  order  that  they  might  overcome  the  corrupt  group 
of  professional  politicians  in  their  own  party.  It  was  absolutely 
necessary  for  all  whites  to  stand  together  if  the  Negroes  voted, 
in  order  to  avoid  the  menace  of  black  control.  But  the  solid 
white  group  was.  manipulated  by  corrupt  politicians.  If  the 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  201 

Negro  were  disfranchised,  the  better  element  of  whites  could 
cope  with  these  undesirables  and  clean  up  politics.  Until  that 
time  the  need  of  self-preservation  required  them  all  to  stand 
together.  And  a  very  significant  outcome  of  the  suppression 
of  the  Negro  vote  was  the  break  from  white  bosses.  The 
better  class  no  longer  was  obliged  to  submit  to  corrupt  domi 
nation  in  order  to  save  itself  from  the  Negroes. 

Champions  of  the  Negro,  on  the  other  hand,  pointed  out 
that  the  men  of  the  South  had  failed  to  prove  that  they  were 
the  Negro's  best  friends.  It  was  said  that  the  Negro  needed 
the  suffrage  in  order  to  defend  themselves  from  persecution.  The 
South  was  his  best  friend  only  when  he  consented  to  be  a  virtual 
slave.  A  comment  on  the  activities  of  white  men  in  driving 
out  the  Negro  vote  occurs  in  a  paper  of  the  American  Negro 
Academy  and  is  summed  up  in  this  way:  "The  significance  of 
the  undoing  of  the  reconstruction  is  that  ...  it  marked  the 
arrogant  reassertion  of  the  malignant  and  desperate  purpose 
of  the  southern  oligarchy,  trained  in  the  absolution  of  slave- 
mastery,  to  despoil  the  Negro  of  the  rights  of  citizenship,  and 
to  reduce  him  to  a  state  of  serfdom." 

Tn  fact,  the  war  had  scarcely  ended  when  southern  states 
began  to  manifest  their  friendly  attitude  toward  the  Negro 
and  pass  legislation  for  his  special  benefit.  In  Florida  in 
1866  Negroes  could  be  arrested  if  they  had  no  visible  means 
of  support,  or  led  an  "idle,  immoral,  or  profligate  course  of 
life."  They  could  be  whipped,  put  in  pillory,  and  bound  out  in 
service  by  the  courts.  In  Virginia  any  justice  of  the  peace 
could  issue  a  warrant  for  a  Negro  to  be  brought  before  him, 
and  if  the  court  found  him  to  be  a  vagrant  he  could  be  bound 
out  to  service.  A  vagrant  was  one  who  lived  idly  and  refused 
to  work  for  current  wages.  In  Louisiana  any  justice  of  the 
peace  could  have  a  Negro  brought  before  him,  and  if  the  courts 
were  satisfied  by  "competent  testimony"  that  the  fellow  was 
a  vagrant  he  could  be  bound  out. 

Of  course  such  acts  as  these  did  prevail  after  the  recon 
struction  governments  were  in  control,  but  when  the  whites  got 
back  in  power  the  same  spirit  manifested  itself  in  somewhat  less 
offensive  and  more  covert  ways.  The  inferior  courts  of  justice, 
the  pettiest  officials,  and  those  representatives  of  the  government 
with  whom  the  Negro  was  in  constant  and  intimate  contact 
were  much  inclined  to  persecute  and  discriminate  against  him 


202  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

in  all  his  petty  conflicts  with  the  state,  and  all  this  chiefly 
because  he  came  to  have  no  power  at  the  polls.  But  the  question 
arises  at  once:  How  did  the  South  succeed  in  excluding  the 
Negro  from  the  polls  in  view  of  the  war  amendments?  Did  these 
illegal  practices  persist  and  effectively  achieve  their  end? 

In  brief,  they  did  succeed.  They  succeeded  for  twenty 
years  or  more  or  until  the  southern  states  undertook  to  revise 
their  constitutions  and  make  the  exclusion  of  Negroes  really 
legal.  However,  these  extra-legal  or  illegal  practices  could  not 
have  persisted  had  it  not  been  for  the  attitude  of  the  federal 
courts.  Tribunals  very  early  began  to  exhibit  a  tendency  to 
keep  "hands  off"  the  southerners  and  not  force  the  issue  with 
them.  All  the  burden  of  proof  was  laid  upon  the  Negro  to 
show  that  he  was  being  denied  a  right,  and  the  courts  took 
advantage  of  technicalities  and  ambiguities  to  make  the  Negro's 
problem  all  the  harder. 

To  return  to  the  new  phase  of  the  Negro  suffrage  issue — 
the  demand  for  reduction  of  representation  in  proportion  to 
the  number  of  Negroes  disfranchised.  Since  the  movement  for 
Negro  suffrage  has  been  diverted  into  this  channel  and  lost, 
as  it  were,  it  is  appropriate  to  consider  the  merits  of  the 
problem. 

In  the  first  place  the  question  is  whether  the  Fourteenth 
Amendment  is  intended  to  operate  literally  whenever  suffrage 
is  reduced.  It  has  been  argued  very  ably  that  such  is  not  the 
case,  that  it  cannot  be  that  anyone  intended  to  reduce  repre 
sentation  when  suffrage  was  denied  on  account  of  crime,  illit 
eracy,  etc.  Other  writers  have  developed  the  proposition  that 
it  makes  no  difference  what  was  meant,  for  the  Fifteenth 
Amendment  has  superseded  and  made  imperative  that  clause 
of  the  Fourteenth.  However,  if  the  Fourteenth  Amendment 
intended  only  to  reduce  representation  when  suffrage  was  denied 
on  account  of  race,  color,  etc.,  the  Fifteenth  Amendment,  if  not 
abrogating  it,  at  least  paralyzed  it,  and  the  Fourteenth  could  not 
operate,  for  its  operation  would  imply  the  existence  of  an 
unconstitutional  state  of  affairs.  But  if  one  looks  at  the 
Fourteenth  Amendment  and  merely  considers  exactly  what  it 
says,  not  what  it  may  mean,  but  what  it  says  in  plain,  blunt 
English,  there  is  no  argument  left.  It  then  looms  as  a  very 
unwise  measure,  practically  impossible  of  being  put  into  effect- 
but  there  nevertheless. 

The    situation   has    aroused   violent   protest    in    the    North. 


THE   NEGRO   PROBLEM  203 

Magazine  writers  have  written  about  it,  speakers  have  discussed 
it  in  public,  and  civic  clubs  have  passed  resolutions  about  it. 
In  fact,  the  cause  of  Negro  suffrage  has  been  swallowed  up 
in  the  argument  over  the  practical  political  effect  of  his  dis- 
franchisement. 

The  South  is  grossly  over-represented.  The  number  of  voters 
in  the  South  electing  representatives  to  Congress  is  very  much 
smaller  than  the  number  of  voters  in  the  North  electing  an 
equal  number  of  representatives.  The  southerner,  however, 
says  that  congressmen  do  not  represent  voters  alone,  as  the 
northerner's  argument  implies,  but  all  the  people — and  hence  all 
should  be  counted  whether  they  vote  or  not.  It  is  none  of  the 
northerner's  business  how  the  southern  districts  select  their 
representatives. 

The  framers  of  the  Fourteenth  Amendment  probably  never 
foresaw  the  overwhelming  difficulties  in  the  way  of  enforcing 
it.  These  problems  can  only  be  hinted  at  and  references  made 
to  fuller  treatments  of  the  case.  It  is  almost  impossible  to 
discover  how  many  men  are  really  disfranchised.  Many  do  not 
vote  because  of  choice.  And  when  it  is  attempted  to  enumerate 
those  disfranchised  for  some  specific  cause  the  problem  is 
intensified.  A  literal  application  of  the  amendment  would  rad 
ically  alter  our  political  concept  of  representation,  involving 
representation  based  on  voting  population  and  not  on  the  actual 
population. 

The  bills  introduced  in  Congress  demanding  the  application 
of  the  Fourteenth  Amendment  exhibit  an  utter  lack  of  appre 
ciation  of  the  difficulties  involved,  and  no  solution  has  yet  been 
offered.  It  is  one  of  the  most  serious  problems  of  the  day  and 
threatens  much  trouble,  especially  if  the  Democratic  party  remains 
in  power.  The  Republicans  would  be  likely  to  become  more  and 
more  restive  under  the  conviction  that  Democratic  power  is 
being  supported  by  unfair  methods. 


UNDOING  OF  RECONSTRUCTION  ' 

In  the  meantime,  a  process  had  been  instituted  in  the 
Southern  states  that  has  given  the  most  distinctive  character 
to  the  last  period  in  the  undoing  of  reconstruction.  The  gen- 

1  From  article  by  William  A.  Dunning.  Atlantic  Monthly.  88:437-49- 
October,  1901. 


204  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

eration-long  discussions  of  the  political  conditions  in  the  South 
have  evoked  a  variety  of  explanations  by  the  whites  of  the 
disappearance  of  the  black  vote.  These  different  explanations 
have  of  course  all  been  current  at  all  times  since  reconstruction 
was  completed,  and  have  embodied  different  degrees  of  plausi 
bility  and  truth  in  different  places.  But  it  may  fairly  be  said 
that  in  each  of  the  three  periods  into  which  the  undoing  of 
reconstruction  falls  one  particular  view  has  been  dominant  and 
characteristic.  In  the  first  period  that  of  the  Ku  Klux  and  the 
Mississippi  plan,  it  was  generally  maintained  by  the  whites  that 
the  black  vote  was  not  suppressed,  and  that  there  was  no 
political  motive  behind  the  disturbances  that  occurred.  The 
victims  of  murder,  bulldozing,  and  other  violence  were  repre 
sented  as  of  bad  character  and  socially  dangerous,  and  their 
treatment  as  merely  incident  to  their  own  illegal  and  violent 
acts  and  expressive  of  the  tendency  to  self-help  instead  of 
judicial  procedure,  which  had  always  been  manifest  in  Southern 
life,  and  had  been  aggravated  by  the  demoralization  of  war 
time.  After  1877  when  the  falling  off  in  the  Republican  vote 
became  so  conspicuous,  the  phenomenon  was  explained  by  the 
assertion  that  the  Negroes  had  seen  the  light,  and  had  become 
Democrats.  Mr.  Lamar  gravely  maintained,  in  a  famous  contro 
versy  with  Mr.  Elaine,  that  the  original  Republican  theory  as 
to  the  educative  influence  of  the  ballot  had  been  proved  cor 
rect  by  the  fact  that  the  enfranchised  race  had  come  to  recognize 
that  their  true  interests  lay  with  the  Democratic  party ;  the 
Republicans  were  estopped,  he  contended,  by  their  own  doctrine 
from  finding  fault  with  the  result.  A  corollory  of  this  idea  that 
the  Negroes  were  Democrats  was  generally  adopted  later  in  the 
period,  to  the  effect  that  since  there  was  practically  no  opposition 
to  the  democracy,  the  Negroes  had  lost  interest  in  politics. 
They  had  got  on  the  road  to  economic  prosperity,  and  were  too 
busy  .with  their  farms  and  their  growing  bank  accounts  to  care 
for  other  things. 

Whatever  of  soundness  there  may  have  been  in  any  of  these 
explanations,  all  have  been  superseded,  during  the  last  decade, 
by  another,  which,  starting  with  the  candid  avowal  that  the 
whites  are  determined  to  rule,  concedes  that  the  elimination  of 
the  blacks  from  politics  has  been  effected  by  intimidation,  fraud, 
and  any  other  means,  legal  or  illegal,  that  would  promote  the 
desired  end.  This  admission  has  been  accompanied  by  expres 
sions  of  sincere  regret  that  illegal  means  were  necessary,  and  by 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  205 

a  general  movement  toward  clothing  with  the  forms  of  law  the 
enfranchisement  which  had  been  made  a  fact  without  them. 
In  1890  just  when  the  Republicans  in  Congress  were  pushing 
their  project  for  renewing  the  federal  control  of  elections, 
Mississippi  made  the  first  step  in  a  new  direction.  Her  consti 
tution  wras  so  revised  as  to  provide  that,  to  be  a  qualified  elector, 
a  citizen  must  produce  evidence  of  having  paid  his  taxes  (includ 
ing  a  poll  tax)  for  the  past  two  years,  and  must,  in  addition, 
"be  able  to  read  any  section  in  the  constitution  of  this  state,  or 
...  be  able  to  understand  the  same  when  read  to  him,  or  give 
a  reasonable  interpretation  thereof."  Much  might  be  said  in 
favor  of  such  an  alternative  intelligence  qualification  in  the 
abstract:  the  mere  ability  to  read  is  far  from  conclusive  of 
intellectual  capacity.  But  the  peculiar  form  of  this  particular 
provision  was  confessedly  adopted,  not  from  any  consideration 
of  its  abstract  excellence,  but  in  order  to  vest  in  the  election 
officers  the  power  of  disfranchising  illiterate  blacks  without  dis 
franchising  illiterate  whites.  In  practice,  the  white  must  be 
stupid  indeed  who  cannot  satisfy  the  official  demand  for  a 
"reasonable  interpretation,"  while  the  Negro  who  can  satisfy  it 
must  be  a  miracle  of  brilliancy. 

Mississippi's  bold  and  undisguised  attack  on  Negro  suffrage 
excited  much  attention.  In  the  South  it  met  with  practically 
unanimous  approval  among  thoughtful  and  conscientious  men, 
who  had  been  distressed  by  the  false  position  in  which  they  had 
long  been  placed.  And  at  the  North,  public  opinion,  accepting 
with  a  certain  satirical  complacency  the  confession  of  the  South 
erners  that  their  earlier  explanations  of  conditions  had  been  false, 
acknowledged  in  turn  that  its  views  as  to  the  political  capacity 
of  the  blacks  had  been  irrational,  and  manifested  no  disposition 
for  a  new  crusade  in  favor  of  Negro  'equality.  The  action  of 
Mississippi  raised  certain  questions  of  constitutional  law  which 
had  to  be  tested  before  her  solution  of  the  race  problem  could 
be  regarded  as  final.  Like  all  the  other  seceded  states,  save 
Tennessee,  she  had  been  readmitted  to  representation  in  Con 
gress,  after  reconstruction,  on  the  express  condition  that  her 
constitution  should  never  be  so  amended  as  to  disfranchise  any 
who  were  entitled  to  vote  under  the  existing  provisions.  The 
new  amendment  was  a  most  explicit  violation  of  this  condition. 
Further,  so  far  as  the  new  clause  could  be  shown  to  be  directed 
against  'the  Negroes  as  a  race,  it  was  in  contravention  of  the 


206  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

Fifteenth  Amendment.  These  legal  points  had  been  elaborately 
discussed  in  the  state  convention,  and  the  opinion  had  been 
adopted  that,  since  neither  race,  color,  nor  previous  condition 
of  servitude  was  made  the  basis  of  discrimination  in  the  suffrage, 
the  Fifteenth  Amendment  had  no  application,  and  that  the 
prohibition  to  modify  the  constitution  was  entirely  beyond  the 
powers  of  Congress,  and  was  therefore  void.  When  the  Supreme 
Court  of  the  United  States  was  required  to  consider  the  new 
clause  of  Mississippi's  constitution,  it  adopted  the  views  of  the 
convention  on  these  points,  and  sustained  the  validity  of  the 
enactment.  There  was  still  one  contingency  that  the  whites  had 
to  face  in  carrying  out  the  new  policy.  By  the  Fourteenth 
Amendment  it  is  provided  that  if  a  state  restricts  the  franchise 
her  representation  in  Congress  shall  be  proportionately  reduced. 
There  was  a  strong  sentiment  in  Mississippi  as  there  is  through 
out  the  South,  that  a  reduction  of  representation  would  not  be 
an  intolerable  price  to  pay  for  the  legitimate  extinction  of  Negro 
suffrage.  But  loss  of  Congressmen  was  by  no  means  longed  for, 
and  the  possibility  of  such  a  thing  was  very  carefully  considered. 
The  phrasing  of  the  franchise  clause  may  not  have  been  actually 
determined  with  reference  to  this  matter;  but  it  is  obvious  that 
the  application  of  the  Fourteenth  Amendment  is,  to  say  the 
least,  not  facilitated  by  the  form  used. 

Incidentally  to  the  conditions  which  produced  the  Populist 
party,  the  whites  of  South  Carolina,  in  the  years  succeeding  1890, 
became  divided  into  two  intensely  hostile  factions.  The  weaker 
manifested  a  purpose  to  draw  on  the  Negroes  for  support  and 
began  to  expose  some  of  the  devices  by  which  the  blacks  had 
been  prevented  from  voting.  Instead  of  competing  with  its 
rival  for  the  black  vote,  the  stronger  faction,  headed  by  Mr. 
Tillman,  promptly  took  the  ground  that  South  Carolina  must 
have  a  "white  man's  government,"  and  put  into  effect  the  new 
Mississippi  plan.  A  constitutional  amendment  was  adopted  in 
1895  which  applied  the  "understanding  clause"  for  two  years 
and  after  that  required  of  every  elector  either  the  ability  to 
read  and  write  or  the  ownership  of  property  to  the  amount  of 
three  hundred  dollars.  In  the  convention  which  framed  this 
amendment,  the  sentiment  of  the  whites  revealed  very  clearly, 
not  only  through  its  content,  but  especially  through  the  frank 
and  emphatic  form  in  which  it  was  expressed,  that  the  aspira- 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  207 

tions  of  the  Negro  to  equality  in  political  rights  would  never 
again  receive  the  faintest  recognition. 

Since  the  action  of  South  Carolina,  two  other  states,  Louis 
iana  and  North  Carolina  have  excluded  the  blacks  from  the 
suffrage  by  analogous  constitutional  amendments;  and  in  two 
others  still,  Alabama  and  Virginia,  conventions  are  considering 
the  subject  as  this  article  goes  to  press  (August  1901).  By 
Louisiana,  however,  a  new  method  was  devised  for  exempting 
the  whites  from  the  effect  of  the  property  and  intelligence  tests. 
The  hereditary  principle  was  introduced  into  the  franchise  by 
the  provision  that  right  to  vote  should  belong,  regardless  of 
education  or  property  to  every  one  whose  father  or  grand 
father  possessed  the  right  on  January  I,  1867.  This  "grand 
father  clause"  has  been  adopted  by  North  Carolina,  also,  and 
in  a  modified  form  and  for  a  very  limited  time,  by  the  conven 
tion  in  Alabama.  The  basis  for  the  hereditary  right  in  this 
latter  state  has  been  found,  not  in  the  possession  of  the  fran 
chise  by  the  ancestry,  but  in  the  fact  of  his  having  been  a 
soldier  in  any  war  save  that  with  Spain.  As  compared  with  the 
Mississippi  device  for  evading  the  Fifteenth  Amendment  the 
"grandfather  clause"  has  the  merit  of  incorporating  the  dis 
crimination  in  favor  of  the  whites  in  the  written  law  rather  than 
referring  it  to  the  discretion  of  the  election  officers. 

With  the  enactment  of  these  constitutional  amendments  by 
the  various  states  the  political  equality  of  the  Negro  is  becoming 
as  extinct  in  law  as  it  has  long  been  in  fact,  and  the  undoing 
of  reconstruction  is  nearing  completion. 


PROBLEMS  OF  CITIZENSHIP  l 

Let  me  lay  down  this  general  proposition: 

Nowhere  'in  the  South  today  is  the  Negro  cut  off  legally,  as 
a  Negro,  from  the  ballot.  Legally,  today,  any  Negro  who 
can  meet  the  comparatively  slight  requirements  as  to  educa 
tion,  or  property,  or  both,  can  cast  his  ballot  on  a  basis  of 
equality  with  the  white  man.  I  have  emphasized  the  word 
legally,  for  I  know  the  practical  difficulties  which  confront 
the  Negro  voter  in  many  parts  of  the  South.  In  the  enforcement 

1  From  article  by  Ray  Stannard  Baker,  Amherst,  Mass.  Annals  of 
the  American  Academy.  49:93-104.  September,  1913. 


208  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

of  the  law,  the  legislative  ideal  is  still  pegged  out  far  beyond 
the  actual  performance. 

Now,  then,  if  we  are  interested  in  the  problem  of  democ 
racy,  we  have  two  courses  open  to  us.  We  may  think  the  laws 
are  unjust  to  the  Negro,  and  incidentally  to  the  poor  white  man 
as  well.  If  we  do  we  have  a  perfect  right  to  agitate  for  a 
change,  and  we  can  do  much  to  disclose,  without  heat,  the 
actual  facts  regarding  the  complicated  and  vexatious  legislative 
situation  in  the  South,  as  regards  the  suffrage.  Every  change 
in  the  legislation  upon  this  subject  should,  indeed,  be  jealously 
watched  that  the  principle  of  political  equality  between  the  races 
be  not  legally  curtailed.  The  doctrine  laid  down  in  the  fifteenth 
amendment  must,  at  any  hazard,  be  maintained. 

But  personally,  and  I  am  here  voicing  a  profound  conviction, 
I  think  our  emphasis  at  present  should  be  laid  upon  the  prac 
tical  rather  than  upon  the  legal  aspect  of  the  problem.  I  think 
we  should  take  advantage  of  the  widely  prevalent  feeling  in 
the  South  that  the  question  of  suffrage  has  been  settled,  legally, 
for  some  time  to  come ;  of  the  desire  on  the  part  of  many 
Southern  people,  both  white  and  colored,  to  turn  aside  from 
the  discussion  of  the  political  status  of  the  Negro.  In  short, 
let  us  for  the  time  being  accept  the  laws  as  they  are,  and*  build 
upward  from  that  point.  Let  us  turn  our  attention  to  the 
practical  task  of  finding  out  why  it  is  that  the  laws  we  already 
have  are  not  enforced,  and  how  best  to  secure  an  honest  vote 
for  every  Negro  and  equally  for  every  "poor  white"  man,  (and 
there  are  thousands  of  him)  who  is  able  to  meet  the  require 
ments,  but  who  for  one  reason  or  another  does  not  or  can 
not  exercise  his  rights. 

Taking  up  this  side  of  the  question  we  shall  discover  two 
entirely 'distinct  difficulties: 

First,  we  shall  find  many  Negroes,  and  indeed  hundreds  of 
thousands  of  white  men  as  well,  who  might  vote,  but  who 
through  ignorance,  or  the  inability  or  unwillingness  to  pay  poll 
taxes,  or  from  mere  lack  of  interest,  disfranchise  themselves. 

The  second  difficulty  is  peculiar  to  the  Negro.  It  consists  in 
open  or  concealed  intimidation  on  the  part  of  the  white  men 
who  control  the  election  machinery.  In  many  places  in  the 
South  today  no  Negro,  no  matter  how  well  qualified,  would  dare 
to  present  himself  for  registration.  When  he  does  he  is  often 
rejected  for  some  trivial  or  illegal  reason. 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  209 

Thus  we  have  to  meet  a  vast  amount  of  apathy  and  ignorance 
and  poverty  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  threat  of  intimidation 
on  the  other. 

First  of  all,  for  it  is  the  chief  injustice  as  between  white  and 
colored  men  with  which  we  have  to  deal— an  injustice  which  the 
law  already  makes  punishable — how  shall  we  meet  the  matter  of 
intimidation?  As  I  have  said  already  the  door  of  the  suf 
frage  is  everywhere  legally  open  to  the  Negro,  but  a  certain 
sort  of  Southerner  bars  the  passageway.  He  stands  there  and, 
law  or  no  law,  keeps  out  many  Negroes  who  might  vote,  and 
he  represents  in  most  parts  of  the  South  the  prevailing  public 
opinion. 

Shall  we  meet..,ihis  situation  by  force?  What  force  is  avail 
able?  Shall  the  North  go  down  and  fight  the  South?  But 
the  North  today  has  no  feeling  but  friendship  for  the  South. 
More  than  that,  and  I  say  it  with  all  seriousness,  because  it 
represents  what  I  have  heard  wherever  I  have  gone  in  the 
North  to  make  inquiries  regarding  the  Negro  problem,  the 
North,  wrongly  or  rightly,  is  today  more  than  half  convinced 
that  the  South  is  right  in  imposing  some  measure  of  limita 
tion  upon  the  franchise.  There  is  now,  in  short,  no  disposition 
anywhere  in  the  North  to  interfere  in  the  internal  affairs  of 
the  South — not  even  with  the  force  of  public  opinion. 

What  other  force,  then,  is  to  be  invoked?  Shall  the  Negro 
revolt?  Shall  he  migrate?  The  very  asking  of  these  questions 
suggests  the  inevitable  reply. 

We  might  as  well,  here  and  now,  dismiss  the  idea  of  force, 
expressed  or  implied.  There  are  times  of  last  resort  which  call 
for  force  (and  the  time  may  come  in  the  future  when  force 
will  again  have  to  be  applied  to  cure  injustice)  ;  but  this  plainly 
is  not  such  a  time. 

What  other  alternatives  are  there? 

Accepting  the  laws  as  they  are,  then,  there  are  two  methods 
of  procedure,  neither  sensational,  nor  exciting. 

The  underlying  causes  of  the  trouble  in  the  country  being 
plainly  ignorance  and  prejudice,  we  must  meet  ignorance  and 
prejudice  with  their  antidotes :  education  and  association. 

Every  effort  should  be  made  to  extend  free  education  both 
among  Negroes  and  white  people.  A  great  extension  of  educa 
tion  is  now  going  forward  in  the  South.  The  Negro  is  not 
by  any  means  getting  his  full  share  (indeed  he  is  getting  shame- 


210  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

fully  less  than  his  share),  but  as  certainly  as  sunshine  makes 
things  grow,  education  in  the  South  will  produce  tolerance. 
That  there  is  already  such  a  growing  tolerance  no  one  who 
has  talked  with  the  leading  white  men  of  the  South  can  doubt. 
The  old  fire-eating,  Negro-baiting  leaders  of  the  Tillman- 
Vardaman  type  are  passing  away:  a  far  better  and  broader 
group  is  coming  into  power. 

From  an  able  Southern  white  man,  a  resident  of  New 
Orleans,  I  received  only  recently  a  letter  containing  these 
words : 

"I  believe  we  have  reached  the  bottom,  and  a  sort  of 
quiescent  period.  I  think  it  most  likely  that  from  now  on 
there  will  be  a  gradual  increase  in  the  Negro  vote.  And  I 
honestly  believe  that  the  less  said  about  it,  the  surer  the  in 
crease  will  be." 

Education,  and  by  education  I  mean  education  of  all  sorts, 
industrial,  professional,  classical,  in  accordance  with  each  man's 
talents  will  not  only  produce  breadth  and  tolerance,  but  it  will 
help  to  cure  the  apathy  which  now  keeps  so  many  thousands  of 
both  white  men  and  Negroes  from  the  polls :  for  it  will  show 
them  that  it  is  necessary  for  every  man  to  exercise  all  the 
political  rights  within  his  reach.  For  if  he  fails  voluntarily 
to  take  advantage  of  the  rights  he  already  has,  how  shall  he 
acquire  more  rights? 

As  ignorance  must  be  met  by  education,  so  prejudice  must 
be  met  with  its  antidote,  which  is  association.  Democracy  does 
not  consist  in  mere  voting,  but  in  association,  the  spirit  of 
common  effort,  of  which  the  ballot  is  a  visible  expression. 
When  we  come  to  know  one  another  we  soon  find  that  the 
points  of  likeness  are  much  more  numerous  than  the  points 
of  difference.  And  this  human  association  for  the  common 
good,  which  is  democracy,  is  difficult  to  bring  about  anywhere, 
whether  among  different  classes  of  white  people,  or  between 
white  people  and  Negroes. 

After  the  Atlanta  riot  I  attended  a  number  of  conferences 
between  leading  white  men  and  leading  colored  men.  It  is 
true  these  meetings  bore  evidence  of  awkwardness  and  em 
barrassment,  for  they  were  among  the  first  of  that  sort  to 
take  place  in  the  South,  but  they  were  none  the  less  valuable. 
A  white  man  told  me  after  one  of  these  meetings:  "I  did  not 
know  there  were  any  such  sensible  Negroes  in  the  South."  And 


THE   NEGRO   PROBLEM  211 

a  Negro  told  me  that  it  was  the  first  time  in  his  life  that  he 
had  ever  heard  a  Southern  white  man  reason  in  a  friendly 
manner  with  a  Negro  concerning  their  common  difficulties. 

More  and  more  these  associations  of  white  and  colored  men, 
at  certain  points  of  contact,  must  and  will  come  about.  Already, 
in  connection  with  various  educational  and  business  projects 
in  the  South,  white  men  and  colored  men  meet  on  common 
grounds,  and  the  way  has  been  opened  to  a  wider  mutual  under 
standing.  And  it  is  common  enough  now,  where  it  was  unheard 
of  a  few  years  ago,  for  both  white  men  and  Negroes  to  speak 
from  the  same  platform  in  the  South.  I  have  attended  a  num 
ber  of  such  meetings.  Thus  slowly,  awkwardly  at  first — for  two 
centuries  of  prejudice  are  not  easily  overcome — the  white  man 
and  Negro  are  coming  to  know  each  other,  not  as  master  and 
servant,  but  as  co-workers.  These  things  cannot  be  forced. 

One  reason  why  the  white  man  and  the  Negro  have  not  got 
together  more  rapidly  in  the  South  than  they  have,  is  be 
cause  they  have  tried  always  to  meet  at  the  sorest  points. 
When  sensible  people-,  who  must  live  together  whether  or  no, 
find  that  there  are  points  at  which  they  cannot  agree,  it  is  the 
part  of  wisdom  to  avoid  those  points,  and  to  meet  upon  other 
and  common  interests.  Upon  no  other  terms,  indeed,  can  a 
democracy  exist,  for  in  no  imaginable  future  state  will  in 
dividuals  cease  to  disagree  with  one  another  upon  something 
less  than  half  of  all  the  problems  of  life. 

"Here  we  all  live  together  in  a  great  country,"  say  the 
apostles  of  this  view,  "let  us  all  get  together  and  develop  it. 
Let  the  Negro  do  his  best  to  educate  himself,  to  own  his  own 
land,  and  to  buy  and  sell  with  the  white  people  in  the  fairest 
possible  way." 

Now,  buying  and  selling,  land  ownership  and  common 
material  pursuits  may  not  be  the  highest  points  of  contact  be 
tween  man  and  man,  but  they  are  real  points,  and  they  help  to 
give  men  an  idea  of  the  worth  of  their  fellows,  white  or  black. 
How  many  times,  in  the  South,  I  have  heard  a  white  man 
speak  in  high  admiration  for  some  Negro  farmer  who  had 
been  successful,  or  of  some  Negro  blacksmith  who  was  a  worthy 
citizen,  or  some  Negro  doctor  who  was  a  leader  of  his  race. 

Out  of  crude  points  of  contact  will  grow  an  ever  finer  and 
finer  spirit  of  association  and  of  common  and  friendly  knowl 
edge.  And  that  will  lead  inevitably  to  an  extension  upon  the 


212  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

soundest  possible  basis  of  Negro  franchise.  I  know  cases  where 
white  men  have  urged  intelligent  Negroes  to  cast  their  ballots, 
and  have  stood  sponsor  for  them  out  of  genuine  respect.  Today, 
Negroes  who  vote  in  the  South  are  as  a  class,  men  of  sub 
stance  and  intelligence,  fully  equal  to  the  tasks  of  citizenship. 

Thus  I  have  confidence  not  only  in  the  sense  of  the  white 
man  in  the  South  but  in  the  innate  capability  of  the  Negro — 
and  that  once  these  two  really  come  to  know  each  other,  not 
at  sore  points  of  contact,  nor  as  mere  master  and  servant,  but 
as  workers  for  a  common  country,  the  question  of  suffrage 
will  gradually  solve  itself  in  the  interest  of  true  democracy. 

Another  influence  also  will  tend  to  change  the  status  of  the 
Negro  as  a  voter.  That  is  the  pending  break-up  of  the  political 
solidarity  of  the  South.  All  the  signs  point  to  a  political  re 
alignment  upon  new  issues  in  this  country,  both  South  and 
North.  Old  party  names  may  even  pass  away.  And  that  break 
up,  with  the  attendant  struggle  for  votes,  is  certain  to  bring 
into  politics  thousands  of  Negroes  and  white  men  now  dis 
franchised.  The  result  of  a  real  division  on  live  issues  has 
been  shown  in  many  local  contests  in  the  South,  as  in  the 
fight  against  the  saloons,  when  every  qualified  Negro  voter,  and 
every  Negro  who  could  qualify,  was  eagerly  pushed  forward 
by  one  side  or  the  other.  With  such  a  division  on  new  issues 
the  Negro  will  tend  to  exercise  more  and  more  political  power, 
dividing  not  on  the  color  line,  but  on  the  principles  at  stake. 
Still  another  influence  which  is  helping  to  solve  the  problem 
is  the  wider  diffusion  of  Negroes  throughout  the  country.  The 
proportion  of  Negroes  to  the  whites  in  most  of  the  Southern 
States  is  decreasing,  thereby  relieving  the  fear  of  Negro  domi 
nation,  whereas  Negroes  are  increasing  largely  in  Northern 
communities,  where  they  take  their  place  in  politics  not  as  an 
indigestible  mass,  but  divide  along  party  lines  even  more  readily 
than  some  of  the  foreign-American  groups  in  our  population.  A 
study  of  the  Negro  vote  in  November,  1912,  would  show  that 
many  Negroes  broke  their  historic  allegiance  with  the  Repub 
lican  party  and  voted  for  Roosevelt,  while  some  even  cast  their 
votes  for  Wilson;  and  in  local  elections  the  division  is  still 
more  marked. 

Thus  in  spite  of  the  difficulties  which  now  confront  the 
Negro,  I  cannot  help  looking  upon  the  situation  with  a  spirit 
of  optimism.  I  think  sometimes  we  are  tempted  to  set  a  higher 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  213 

value  upon  the  ritual  of  a  belief  than  upon  the  spirit  which 
underlies  it.  The  ballot  is  not  democracy;  it  is  merely  the 
symbol  or  ritual  of  democracy,  and  it  may  be  full  of  pas 
sionate  social  significance,  or  it  may  be  a  mere  empty  and  dan- 
generous  formalism.  What  we  should  look  to,  then,  primarily,  is 
not  the  shadow,  but  the  substance  of  democracy  in  this  coun 
try.  Nor  must  we  look  for  results  too  swiftly;  our  progress 
toward  democracy  is  slow  of  growth  and  needs  to  be  culti 
vated  with  patience  and  watered  with  faith. 


WHY  DISFRANCHISEMENT  IS  BAD1 

If  the  disfranchisement  of  the  Negro  by  the  South  could 
settle  permanently  the  Negro  question,  I  think  that  the  action 
of  that  section  would  find  its  justification  in  that  achievement, 
according  to  the  Jesuitical  principle  that  the  end  justifies  the 
means.  But  can  disfranchisement  of  the  Negro  settle  the  Negro 
question?  First:  Can  it  do  so  for  the  Negro?  Second:  Can  it 
do  so  for  the  South?  Third:  Can  it  do  so  for  the  rest  of  the 
nation?  I  do  not  think  that  it  can  do  so  for  the  Negro,  or  for 
the  South,  or  for  the  rest  of  the  nation.  And  unless  disfran 
chisement  of  the  Negro  settles  this  question  in  its  three-fold 
aspect,  it  will  not  settle  it  in  such  a  way  that  it  will  long  stay 
settled.  If  the  Negro  refuse  to  abide  by  such  a  settlement,  the 
question  will  not  be  so  settled  merely  because  the  South  has 
decided  so  to  settle  it.  Neither  can  the  South  of  today  settle 
the  question  by  disfranchisement,  if  disfranchisement  of  the 
Negro  be  found  in  operation  to  injure  the  South  of  tomorrow 
much  more  deeply  than  it  does  the  Negro.  For  what  is  bad 
for  the  Negro  today  will  be  found  to  be  still  worse  for  the 
South  tomorrow.  The  South  must,  therefore,  awake  some  time 
to  this  fact,  unless  she  is  indeed  stricken  with  that  hopeless 
madness  by  which  the  gods  intend  to  destroy  her.  But  even 
if  the  South  and  the  Negro  agree  so  to  settle  the  question,  the 
question  will  not  be  permanently  settled  in  the  North,  if  the 
rest  of  the  nation,  refuses  eventually  to  form  a  party  to  the 
compact.  For.  the  rest  of  the  nation,  quite  independently  of 
the  action  of  the  South  and  the  acquiescence  of  the  Negro, 
will  have  something,  something  very  decisive  to  say  ultimately 

1  By   Archibald   H.    Grimke.     Atlantic.     94:72-81.     July,    1904. 


214  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

about  the  settlement  of  this  question.  The  North  has,  in  reality, 
quite  as  much  at  stake  in  its  settlement  as  either  the  Negro  or 
the  South.  Disfranchisement  will  not,  therefore,  prove  a  per 
manent  settlement  of  the  Negro  question  if  it  be  found  in 
operation  to  affect  injuriously  Northern  and  national  interests, 
to  work  badly  in  the  conduct  of  governmental  affairs  in  respect 
to  those  interests. 

Can  disfranchisement  settle  the  question  for  the  Negro?  I 
do  not  think  it  can;  I  am  sure  that  it  will  not,  for  the  simple 
and  sufficient  reason  that  the  Negro  will  not  consent  to  such  a 
settlement;  a  settlement  which  virtually  decitizenizes  him,  and 
relegates  him  to  a  condition  of  practical  servitude  in  the 
republic.  He  has  tasted  freedom,  he  has  tasted  manhood  rights, 
he  has  tasted  civil  and  political  equality.  He  knows  that  his 
freedom,  his  American  citizenship,  his  right  to  vote,  have  been 
written  into  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States,  and  written 
large  there  in  three  great  amendments.  He  knows  more;  he 
knows  that  he  himself  has  written  his  title  to  those  rights  with 
his  blood  in  the  history  of  the  country  in  four  wars,  and  he  is  of 
the  firm  belief  that  his  title  to  them  is  a  perfect  one. 

No  party,  no  state,  no  section,  can  therefore,  deprive  him 
of  those  rights  without  leaving  in  his  mind  a  sense  of  bitter 
wrong,  of  being  cheated  of  what  belongs  to  him,  cheated  in 
defiance  of  law,  of  the  supreme  law  of  the  land,  and  in  spite 
of  his  just  claim  to  fairer  treatment  at  the  hands  of  his  fellow 
countrymen.  He  will  understand  that  this  enormity  was  com 
mitted  against  him  on  account  of  his  race  and  color.  He  will 
see  that  it  was  done  by  the  white  race— a  race  that  has  ever 
wronged  him,  that  has  never  failed  to  take  from  him,  because 
it  had  the  power,  whatever  he  cared  most  for  in  the  world; 
Nothing  could  possibly  make  him,  under  such  cruel  circum 
stances,  love  such  a  race,  such  an  enemy.  He  will  learn  to  hate 
the  white  race,  therefore,  with  all  the  strength  and  rancor  of 
centuries  of  accumulated  outrages  and  oppressions. 

The  relation  of  the  two  races  in  the  South  could  not,  then, 
be  one  of  mutual  respect,  confidence,  and  good  will.  It  would 
become,  on  the  contrary,  one  of  mutual  fear,  distrust  and 
hatred.  The  whites  would  fear,  distrust  and  hate  the  Negro, 
and  that  increasingly,  because  they  had  so  deeply  wronged  him ; 
and  the  Negro  would  return  his  fear,  distrust  and  hatred  with 
a  measure  heaping  up  and  running  over,  not  openly,  like  the 


THE  NEGRO  PROBLEM  215 

whites,  to  be  sure,  but  covertly,  cunningly,  because  of  his  weak 
ness.  He  would  live  his  life,  his  deeper  life,  more  and  more 
apart  from  the  whites,  live  it  in  an  underworld  of  which  no 
white  man  would  be  able  to  get  more  than  a  glimpse,  and  that  at 
rare  intervals.  It  would  be  an  underworld  in  which  his  bitter 
sense  of  wrong,  his  brooding  miseries,  his  repressed  faculties 
of  mind,  his  crushed  sensibilities,  his  imprisoned  aspirations  to 
be  and  to  do  as  other  men,  his  elemental  powers  of  resistance, 
his  primitive  passions,  his  savage  instincts,  his  very  despair, 
would  burn  and  rage  beneath  the  thin  crust  of  law  and  order 
which  separates  him  from  the  upper  world  of  the  white  race, 
his  implacable  foe  and  oppressor.  Through  this  thin  crust  of 
law  and  order  there  will  perforce  break  at  times  some  of  that 
hidden  fire,  some  of  that  boiling  lava  of  a  race's  agony  and 
despair.  There  will  be  race  feuds,  race  conflicts,  as  certainly 
as  winds  will  blow,  but  no  one  will  be  deeply  enough  versed 
in  the  movements  of  these  stormy,  these  fiery  currents  and 
visitations  from  the  abysses  of  that  underworld  of  the  Negro, 
to  be  able  to  discover  their  formation,  to  foretell  their  coming, 
or  to  forecast  their  extent  and  duration. 

So  far  as  the  Negro  is  concerned,  then,  to  disfranchise  him 
will  not  settle  the  Negro  question.  It  will  do  anything  else 
better  thatr  that.  For  it  will  make  trouble,  and  no  end  of  it.  It 
will  certainly  make  trouble  if  he  rise  in  the  human  scale  in 
spite  of  the  wrong  done  him.  Does  any  one  think  that  he  will 
ever  cease  to  strive  for  the  restoration  of  his  rights  as  an 
American  citizen,  and  all  of  his  rights,  if  he  rise  in  character, 
property,  and  intelligence?  To  think  the  contrary  is  to  think 
an  absurdity.  But  if  he  fall  in  the  human  scale  in  consequence 
of  the  wrong  done  him,  he  will  surely  drag  the  South  down 
with  him.  For  he  and  the  South  are  bound  the  one  to  the  other 
by  a  ligament  as  vital  as  that  which  bound  together  for  good 
or  bad,  for  life  or  death,  the  Siamese  twins.  The  Enceladian 
struggles  of  the  black  Titan  of  the  South  beneath  the  huge  mass 
of  the  white  race's  brutal  oppressions,  and  of  his  own  imbruted 
nature,  will  shake  peace  out  of  the  land  and  prosperity  out  of 
the  Southern  states,  and  involve,  finally,  whites  and  blacks 
alike  in  common  poverty,  degradation,  and  failure  in  the  eco 
nomic  world,  in  hopeless  decline  of  all  of  the  great  social 
forces  which  make  a  people  move  upward  and  not  downward, 
forward  and  not  backward  in  civilization. 


216  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

Disfranchisement  of  the  Negro  is  bad  for  the  South.  It  is 
bad  for  her,  in  the  first  place,  on  account  of  the  harmful  effect 
produced  by  it  on  her  black  labor.  It  makes  a  large  proportion 
of  her  laboring  population  restless  and  discontented  with  their 
civil  and  social  condition,  and  it  will  keep  them  so.  It  makes 
it  well-nigh  impossible  for  this  restless  and  discontented  labor 
class  to  make  the  most  and  the  best  of  themselves  with  the 
limited  opportunities  afforded  them,  with  the  social  and  political 
restrictions  imposed  by  law  upon  them.  It  hinders  employers 
of  this  labor  from  producing  the  largest  and  the  best  results 
with  it,  for  the  same  cause.  For  to  obtain  by  means  of  this 
labor  the  largest  and  best  results,  employers  of  it  ought  to  do 
the  things,  ought  to  seek  to  have  the  state  do  the  things,  which 
will  tend  to  reduce  the  natural  friction  between  labor  and 
capital  to  its  lowest  terms,  to  make  labor  contented  and  happy, 
surely  not  the  things  which  will  have  the  opposite  effect  on 
that  labor.  Otherwise,  the  energy  which  ought  to  go  into  pro 
duction  will  be  scattered,  consumed,  in  contests  with  capital, 
in  active  or  passive  resistance  to  bad  social,  and  'economic 
conditions,  in  effective  or  in  ineffective  striving  to  improve  those 
conditions. 

Every  labor  class  has  but  a  given  amount  of  energy,  I  take 
it,  to  devote  to  production.  How  much  of  this  energy  may  be 
available  for  productive  purposes  depends  on  its  social  condi 
tions,  whether  it  is  contented  or  discontented,  getting  on  in  the 
world,  getting  ahead  in  material  well-being  and  well-doing;  on  its 
economic  condition,  whether  it  is  intelligent  or  ignorant,  efficient 
or  in  efficient;  on  its  civil  condition,  its  legal  status,  whether  it 
enjoys  equal  laws  and  equal  opportunities  with  other  labor  classes 
in  the  struggle  for  existence,  in  the  battle  for  bread,  or  whether 
it  is  crippled,  obstructed  instead,  by  unequal  laws,  by  artificial 
restrictions  which  are  made  to  apply  to  its  activity  alone. 

The  grand  source  of  wealth  of  any  community  is  its  labor. 
The  warfare  which  nation  wages  against  nation  today  is  not 
military,  but  industrial.  Competition  among  nations  for  markets 
for  the  sale  of  their  surplus  products  is  at  bottom  a  struggle 
of  the  labor  of  different  nations  for  industrial  possession  of 
those  markets,  for  the  industrial  supremacy  of  the  labor  of  one 
country  over  the  labor  of  other  countries.  Industrialism,  com 
mercialism  not  militarism,  mark  the  character  of  our  twentieth- 
century  civilization.  That  country,  therefore,  which  takes  into 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  217 

this  industrial  rivalry  and  struggle  the  best  trained,  the  most 
completely  equipped,  the  most  up-to-date  labor,  will  win  over 
those  other  countries  which  bring  to  the  battle  for  world 
markets  a  body  of  crude,  backward,  and  inefficient  labor.  Edu 
cation,  skill,  quality,  tell  in  production;  tell  at  once,  and  tell 
in  the  long  run.  It  is  now  well  understood  that  the  most 
intelligent  labor  is  the  most  profitable  labor.  Ignorant  labor  is 
certainly  no  match  in  world  markets  for  intelligent  labor.  It 
is  no  match  in  home  markets  either.  Quality,  intelligence,  will 
prevail  in  such  an  industrial  contest,  whether  in  agriculture, 
manufactures,  mining,  or  commerce. 

But  to  get  the  best  and  the  most  out  of  labor,  it  must  not 
only  be  intelligent,  it  must  also  be  free — free  to  rise  or  sink  in 
the  social  scale.  It  must  have  a  voice  in  making  the  laws  under 
which  it  lives.  Otherwise  those  laws  will  operate  to  hinder,  not 
to  help  it  to  make  the  best  fight  of  which  it  is  capable  for 
possession  of  home  and  foreign  markets.  Without  this  voice 
the  laws  will  become  more  and  more  unequal  and  oppressive. 
A  labor  class  deprived  of  freedom,  of  a  voice  in  government, 
cannot  maintain  the  advantage  which  mere  intelligence  and  skill 
may  have  gained  for  it  in  the  struggle  for  existence.  As  it 
loses  freedom,  a  voice  in  government,  it  will  lose  ultimately  its 
skill,  its  intelligence  as  an  industrial  factor.  For  it  will  become, 
in  effect,  subject  to,  if  not  exactly  the  slave  of,  the  capitalistic 
and  labor  classes  which  are  free,  which  make  the  laws.  And 
these  classes  will  invariably  act  on  the  assumption  that  the 
more  ignorant  such  a  subject  labor  class  is,  the  less  trouble  it 
will  cause.  In  their  opinion  slave  labor  is  more  manageable 
than  free  labor,  gives  rise  to  simpler  social  conditions,  to 
problems  less  complex  and  difficult  to  handle. 

Instead  of  establishing  schools  for  the  education  of  a  labor 
class  deprived  of  the  right  to  vote,  the  class  which  possesses  the 
right  will  not  establish  new  ones,  and  will,  in  addition,  endeavor 
to  lower  the  standard  of  those  already  established  and  then  to 
do  away  with  them  entirely.  The  chief  end  and  purpose  of  the 
classes  with  the  right  to  vote  will  be,  not  to  raise  the  average 
of  literacy,  of  intelligence  of  the  class  without  that  right,  but 
to  lower  the  same  in  order  the  better  to  keep  it  in  a  state  of 
permanent  industrial  subordination  and  inferiority  to  themselves. 
And  so  the  Negro  labor  of  the  South,  deprived  of  the  right  to 
vote,  will  see  its  schools  diminish  in  numbers  and  quality,  will 


218  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

get,  in  one  state  and  then  in  another,  fewer  schools  and  shorter 
terms,  until  they  reach  the  vanishing  point,  where  in  large 
portions  of  the  South  Negro  schools  will  disappear  altogether. 
Under  such  circumstances  Negro  labor  instead  of  advancing 
in  intelligence  and  skill,  in  economic  efficiency  will  steadily 
lose  the  ground  gained  by  it  in  these  respects  since  the  war,  and 
will  retrograde  to  the  condition  of  dense  ignorance,  of  eco 
nomic  inefficiency,  which  characterized  it  before  that  event. 
Surely  slave  labor  is  the  most  unproductive,  the  most  wasteful 
labor  in  the  world.  As  it  was  not  able  to  compete  successfully 
with  the  free  and  intelligent  labor  of  the  North  before  the  war, 
it  will  not  be  able  to  do  so  today  or  tomorrow.  Ignorant 
Negro  labor  must  weight  the  South  down  heavily,  therefore,  in 
that  industrial  struggle  in  which  it  is  now  engaged,  not  alone 
with  the  rest  of  the  nation,  but  with  the  world.  And  this 
means  for  Southern  labor  industrial  inferiority  to  the  labor  of 
the  rest  of  the  nation  and  of  the  world.  It  means  for  the 
Southern  states  ultimate  industrial  feebleness  and  subordination 
to  the  rest  of  the  nation,  and  a  low  order  of  civilization. 

Thus  it  will  be  found  that  disfranchisement  which  was 
intended  to  make  the  Negro  a  serf,  to  degrade  him  as  a  man, 
to  extinguish  his  ambition,  to  extinguish  his  intelligence,  to  fix 
for  him  in  the  state,  in  society,  a  place  of  permanent  inferiority 
and  subordination  to  the  white  race,  has  degraded  the  whole 
South  industrially  at  the  same  time  and  fixed  for  her  likewise 
a  place  of  permanent  economic  inferiority  and  subordination  to 
the  rest  of  the  nation.  The  huge  body  of  her  black  ignorance, 
poverty,  and  degradation  will  attract  to  itself  by  the  social 
laws  of  gravitation  all  of  the  white  ignorance,  poverty  and 
degradation  of  the  entire  section.  The  stupendous  mass  of  this 
social  and  industrial  wreck,  of  the  ensuing  barbarism  and 
crime,  and  of  race  hatred  and  oppression,  will,  in  the  end,  whelm 
in  common  misery  and  ruin  whites  and  blacks  alike,  the 
whole  labor  of  the  South.  It  is  hard  to  believe  that  that  section 
is  knowingly,  deliberately  invoking  such  a  fate,  merely  for  the 
sake  of  gratifying  its  race  prejudice  against  the  Negro.  But 
whether  it  knowingly  invites  such  consequences  or  not,  its  action 
invites  them.  For  disfranchisement  of  the  Negro  means,  with 
out  doubt,  degradation  of  its  black  labor,  and  this,  in  turn,  the 
certain  degradation  of  its  white  labor  and  this,  in  turn,  inevitable 
industrial  feebleness  and  inferiority,  and  this,  in  turn,  ultimate 


I  THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  219 

sectional  retrogression,  poverty  and  a  low  order  of  civilization. 
Is  the  South  ready  to  pay  such  a  ruinous  price  for  disfran- 
chisement  of  the  Negro  for  the  sake  of  keeping  him  forever 
the  servitor  of  the  white  race?  Perhaps  she  is.  It  looks  so; 
yet  time  alone  can  tell  whether  that  section  on  this  question  is, 
at  bottom,  wise  or  foolish,  sane  or  insane.  If  it  shall  turn  out 
that  it  is  really  foolish,  incurably  mad  on  the  Negro  question, 
then  there  is  no  hope  for  it  within  itself.  It  will  persist  in 
running  straight  upon  its  destruction.  For  alas,  "Whom  the 
gods  would  destroy  they  first  make  mad." 

It  has  been  shown  that  disfranchisement  of  the  Negro  is 
bad  for  the  Negro  and  for  the  South.  It  remains  to  consider 
why  it  is  bad  for  the  North,  for  the  rest  of  the  nation.  But  if 
it  has  been  demonstrated  that  disfranchisement  is  bad  for  the 
Negro  and  for  the  South,  it  will  follow  as  a  logical  conclusion 
that  it  is  bad  for  the  rest  of  the  nation.  For  whatever  injures 
a  part  injures  the  whole.  The  Negro  is  a  part  of  the  South,  the 
South  a  part  of  the  nation,  in  as  real,  as  vital,  a  sense  as  feet 
and  hands  are  parts  of  the  human  body.  Hurt  a  hand,  lame  a 
foot  and  the  whole  body  is  hurt,  lamed  at  the  same  time  and 
for  the  same  cause.  This  is  not  sentiment.  It  is  fact,  it  is 
common,  sense,  it  is  science.  The  old  fable  of  the  Members  and 
the  Belly  is  as  true  and  timely  today  as  it  was  in  ancient 
Roman  days.  Starve  the  belly  and  the  whole  body  is  starved, 
suffers  in  consequence.  Wither  an  arm,  shrivel  a  leg,  dim  an 
•eye,  and  the  whole  body  goes  maimed  and  halt  and  darkened. 

Whatever,  therefore,  renders  it  impossible  for  the  Negro  of 
the  South  to  make  the  most  and  the  best  of  himself  injures  that 
section,  and  this  injury  to  the  South  hurts,  in  turn,  the  whole 
country.  For  social  and  economic  laws  draw  no  color  line, 
exempt  from  their  impartial  operations  no  race  because  it 
happens  to  be  white,  but  fall  equally  on  all,  regardless  of 
artificial  distinctions  and  discriminations  of  rich  and  poor,  on 
strong  and  weak,  on  white  and  black.  Southern  law  and  opinion 
discriminate  against  the  black  man  and  in  favor  of  the  white 
man.  Not  so  the  laws  of  Nature.  What  harms  the  Negro's 
body  will  harm  the  white  man's  body.  What  degrades  Negro 
labor  will  degrade  white  labor  likewise.  What  heals  the  white 
man's  body  will  heal  the  black  man's  body.  And  what  elevates 
white  labor  will  elevate  black  labor  also.  This  is  the  higher  law, 
—a  law  beyond  the  reach  of  revised  constitutions  and  American 


220  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

colorphobia  to  change  or  nullify,— a  law  which  a  greater  than 
the  Supreme  Court  interprets  and  will  execute  with  strict  im 
partiality  neither  for  nor  against  the  Negro,  neither  for  nor 
against  the  South,  but  on  whose  decision,  on  whose  operation, 
hang  verily  the  fate  of  the  Negro,  the  fate  of  the  South,  and 
the  fate  of  the  nation,  at  one  and  the  same  time. 

The  means  which  have  raised  the  labor  of  the  rest  of  the 
nation  to  its  present  high  state  of  productivity  can  rais-e  Southern 
labor,  will  raise  it  in  due  time,  if  utilized  by  that  section,  to  a 
state  of  equal  economic  value  and  industrial  efficiency.  The 
things  which  have  made  the  labor  of  the  North  superior  will 
not  do  less  for  Negro  laborers  in  the  South,— freedom,  edu 
cation,  equality.  Freedom  to  make  the  most  and  the  best  of 
themselves  as  men,  as  Americans;  freedom  to  fall  or  rise 
in  the  social  scale  according  to  merit,  not  color;  education  as 
children  in  the  common  schools;  education  as  citizens  at  the 
polls;  and  equality  of  rights  and  opportunities  with  other  labor 
classes,  with  other  groups  of  Americans  regardless  of  race. 
When  the  Negro  progresses  in  industrial  efficiency,  in  social 
well-being  and  well-doing,  the  South  will  progress  in  these 
important  respects  and  in  others.  That  section  will  gain  im 
measurably,  not  only  in  the  improved  character  of  its  labor,  in 
its  heightened  value  as  a  producer  of  wealth,  but  in  its  heightened 
value  as  a  consumer  of  the  staple  products  of  those  states  and 
of  the  commodities  exchanged  for  them  in  other  markets.  It  is 
needless  to  add  that  the  North,  the  rest  of  the  nation,  would 
gain  enormously  in  wealth  in  the  volume  of  its  Southern  trade, 
from  the  same  causes.  It  is,  then,  wisdom  to  look  carefully 
after  every  hen,  whether  black  or  white,  in  our  national  barn 
yard,  after  every  hen  which  lays  for  the  republic  golden  eggs, 
as  well  as  to  look  out  for  the  acquisition  of  new  markets 
abroad  for  the  sale  of  those  eggs.  The  national  hen  is  of  more 
value  than  her  eggs,  American  labor  than  its  products. 

In  conclusion,  there  is  yet  another  view  of  the  subject  in 
which  the  rest  of  the  nation  is  vitally  interested,  and  that  is  its 
politico-sectional  side.  No  discussion  of  the  question  of  the  dis- 
franchisement  of  the  Negro  by  the  South  is  complete  which 
ignores  this  aspect  of  it.  For  it  is  an  aspect  which  promises 
eventually  to  come  very  much  into  notice  at  the  North.  At 
some  time  in  the  near  or  distant  future  it  is  going  to  occupy 
Northern  attention  to  the  exclusion  of  all  other  phases  of  the 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  221 

vexed  question,  and  perhaps  of  all  other  questions  of  national 
importance  besides.  For,  at  bottom,  it  involves  no  less  an  issue 
than  the  old  one  of  political  domination  between  the  sections. 
Possession  or  control  of  the  government  in  its  three  coordinate 
branches  has  from  the  adoption  of  the  Constitution  been  a  cause 
of  difference  between  the  North  and  the  South,  with  their 
contrary  interests  and  institutions  to  be  protected  and  promoted 
by  means  of  the  joint  action  of  those  branches. 

Before  the  war,  slavery  as  it  affected  the  Negro  was  not 
objectionable  to  the  free  states,  but  slavery  as  it  affected  those 
states  was.  It  was  not  slavery  as  a  moral  wrong,  but  slavery 
as  a  political  evil  to  which  they  were  opposed.  When  they 
came  into  conflict  over  this  subject  with  the  slave  states,  it  was 
not  for  the  sake  of  helping  the  slaves,  but  themselves — it  was 
to  prevent  the  evil  from  growing  as  a  political  power,  to  prevent 
it  from  increasing  its  vote  in  Congress  and  in  the  electoral 
college,  to  prevent  it  from  dominating  in  national  affairs,  in 
national  legislation.  Such  domination,  the  free  states  had 
[earned  by  bitter  experience,  acted  injuriously  upon  their  inter 
ests.  Hence  Northern  opposition  to  the  extension  of  slavery, 
to  the  admission  of  new  slave  states.  Nor  will  the  rest  of  the 
nation  interfere  today  in  the  matter  of  Southern  disfranchise- 
ment  of  the  Negro  for  the  sake  of  the  Negro— that  is,  because  it 
is  more  friendly  to  him  than  to  the  South.  Not  at  all.  When 
the  rest  of  the  nation  interferes  in  the  final  settlement  of  this 
question,  as  it  will  surely  interfere,  its  interference  will  have 
regard  solely  to  itself,  to  its  own  interests  which  shall  at  that 
time  demand  such  action.  But  the  North  cannot  interfere 
politically  in  the  settlement  of  this  question,  whether  in  behalf 
of  the  disfranchised  Negro  or  in  protection  of  its  own  sectional 
interests,  without  mortally  offending  its  sister  section,  without 
reviving  with  new-born  bitterness  and  added  intensity  the  old 
and  fierce  rivalry  between  them,  which  played  such  a  leading 
and,  at  times,  violent  part  in  the  history  of  the  country  for  a 
period  of  seventy  years — say  from  1815  to  1885. 

Not  the  wrong  which  slavery  inflicted  upon  the  Negro  was, 
then,  the  nub  of  the  controversy  between  the  two  halves  of  the 
Union  before  the  war  of  the  Rebellion,  but  the  undue  influence 
in  government  which,  in  the  opinion  of  the  Northern,  it  gave 
to  the  Southern  half.  This  undue  political  influence  had  its 
rise  in  the  right  of  the  South  under  the  Constitution  to  count 


222  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

in  the  apportionment  of  representatives  among  the  states  five 
of  her  slaves  as  three  freeman.  This  feature  of  the  Constitution 
was  distinctly  aristocratic.  It  certainly  was  not  democratic.  For 
it  gave  a  Southern  white  man  who  owned  five  Negro  slaves 
an  electoral  value  in  the  republic  four  times  greater  than  that 
of  a  Northern  white  man.  This  unrepublican,  this  dispropor 
tionate  political  importance  of  a  Southern  slave  owner  over  a 
Northern  freeman  produced  no  end  of  trouble  between  the  two 
classes  of  men.  And  when  it  is  remembered  that  the  ideas 
and  interests  of  these  two  classes  of  men  were  far  from  being 
identical,  that  there  was,  on  the  contrary  no  way  of  bringing 
about  an  identity  of  ideas  and  interests  between  them, — for 
while  one  of  these  groups  was  born  and  bred  under  the  aristo 
cratic  idea  with  a  corresponding  labor  system  which  rooted 
itself  in  that  idea,  the  other  group  was  born  and  bred  under 
the  democratic  idea  with  a  corresponding  labor  system  which 
rooted  itself  in  that  idea, — persons  living  today  may  get  some 
notion  of  the  fierceness  and  depth  of  the  ante-bellum  rivalry 
which  waxed  and  waned,  and  waned  and  waxed  for  a  half 
century,  between  the  slaveholding  and  the  non-slaveholding 
states,  for  possession  of  the  general  government,  as  a  coign  of 
vantage  in  the  struggle  between  them  for  domination  in  the 
republic. 

This  strife,  with  alternations  of  reverses  and  triumphs,  first 
for  one  side  and  then  for  the  other,  went  on  until  1861,  when 
the  rivals  resorted  to  force  to  settle  their  differences.  The 
war  for  the  Union  decided  the  momentous  conflict  in  favor 
of  the  democratic  idea  and  its  system  of  the  free  labor.  The 
Thirteenth  Amendment  destroyed  slavery  and  the  slave  power; 
or  such,  at  least,  was  its  purpose.  The  Fourteenth  Amendment 
provided  forever  against  a  revival  of  the  old  aristocratic  idea 
of  inequality  of  civil  conditions  between  the  races  in  the  South — 
the  real  ground  of  difference  between  the  sections — by  declaring 
all  persons  born  or  naturalized  in  the  United  States  to  be  citizens 
of  the  United  States.  There  was  not  again  to  exist  in  the 
Southern  states  any  system  of  labor  to  take  the  place  of  the  old 
slave  labor  system  except  that  of  free  labor,  and  there  was  not 
again  to  appear  any  corresponding  political  power  in  the  South 
to  take  the  place  of  the  defunct  slave  power;  or  such,  at  least, 
was  the  plain  purpose  of  the  Fourteenth  Amendment.  But  in 
order  to  make  assurance  doubly  sure  on  this  vital  point,  a 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  223 

supplementary  provision  was  incorporated  into  the  amendment, 
to  reduce  the  representation  in  Congress  of  any  state  which 
shall  deny  to  any  portion  of  its  voting  population  the  right  to 
vote  in  the  proportion  which  the  number  of  such  disfranchised 
citizens  "shall  bear  to  the  whole  number  of  citizens  twenty-one 
years  of  age  in  such  state." 

The  rest  of  the  nation  intended  by  these  two  great  acts  to 
destroy,  root  and  branch,  the  old  constitutional  provision  which 
entitled  the  South  to  count  five  slaves  as  three  freemen  in  the 
apportionment  of  representatives  among  the  states.  It  was 
determined  to  rid  the  country  for  all  time  of  any  future  trouble 
from  that  cause.  The  reconstruction  measures  attempted  to 
introduce  into  the  old  slave  states  the  democratic  idea  and  a 
labor  system  corresponding  to  that  idea.  But  in  the  event  of 
failure  in  these  regards,  and  the  ultimate  revival  on  the  part 
of  those  states  of  the  aristocratic  idea  and  a  labor  system  cor 
responding  to  that  idea  it  was  carefully  provided  that  such 
revival  of  the  old  aristocratic  idea  and  labor  system  should  be 
accompanied  by  an  equivalent  loss  of  political  power  on  the  part 
of  those  states.  They  were  no  longer  to  eat  their  cake,  meta 
phorically  speaking,  and  keep  it  too.  For  this  eating  and  keep 
ing  something  at  one  and  the  same  time  means  that  the  some 
thing  kept  belongs  to  some  one  else  than  the  eater.  The  political 
power  which  the  South  manages  to  retain  in  spite  of  her  dis- 
franchisement  of  the  Negro  does  not,  therefore,  belong  to  her. 
If  she  deprives  the  Negro  of  the  right  to  vote  without  being 
deprived  in  turn  of  a  proportionate  share  of  her  representation 
in  Congress,  she  has  possessed  herself  wrongfully  of  a  power 
in  national  politics,  in  national  legislation,  which  rightfully 
belongs  to  the  Negro.  And  this  power  she  may  and  does  exer 
cise  against  the  Negro  and  the  North  at  the  same  time.  It 
will  be  seen  by  the  North  some  day,  as  it  is  seen  today  by 
the  Negro,  that  while  her  old  rival  has  lost  on  paper,  the  old 
three-fifths  slave  representation  under  the  constitution  to  which 
she  was  entitled  before  the  war,  she  has  not  practically  suffered 
any  loss  at  all  in  this  respect,  but  the  contrary.  She  has  actually 
gained  since  the  war  the  other  two-fifths  in  the  apportionment 
of  representatives  among  the  states.  For  five  of  her  disfran 
chised  colored  citizens  count  today  the  same  as  five  Northern 
voters  instead  of  a  proportion  prevailing  in  ante-bellum  times 


224  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

when    it   took   five    slaves   to    equal    three    freemen   in    Federal 
numbers. 

Following  the  adoption  of  the  Fourteenth  Amendment  the 
North  seemed  still  uneasy  on  this  head.  For  very  early,  coming 
events  in  the  South  were  casting  shadows  before  them  to  the 
manifest  disturbance  of  the  Northern  mind.  Heeding  these 
shadows  of  ill  omen  along  the  Southern  horizon,  the  North 
decided  to  clear  the  national  sky  of  every  shadowy  possibility 
of  a  return  of  conditions  which  existed  before  the  war  and 
which  vexed  her  sorely  during  those  bitter  years.  Apprehen 
sive,  then,  lest  the  Fourteenth  Amendment  had  not  made  a 
repetition  of  this  history  impossible,  the  nation  adopted  the 
Fifteenth  Amendment,  which  ordains  that  "the  right  of  citizens 
of  the  United  States  to  vote  shall  not  be  denied  or  abridged  by 
the  United  States  or  by  any  state  on  account  of  race,  color,  or 
previous  condition  of  servitude."  Each  of  those  three  great 
steps  was  taken  by  the  North  to  rid  the  country  of  the  Southern 
aristocratic  idea,  and  of  its  corresponding  labor  system ;  to 
plough  into  Southern  soil  the  democratic  idea  and  its  cor 
responding  system  of  free  labor ;  to  purge  the  Constitution  of 
its  hateful  three-fifths  slave  representation  principle;  to  redress, 
in  short,  the  old  balance  of  political  power  between  the  sections 
in  order  to  secure  forever  the  domination  of  our  Northern 
industrial  democracy  in  national  affairs. 

The  democratic  idea  of  government  has  been  put  to  rout  in 
every  Southern  state  by  the  old  aristocratic  idea  founded  in  race 
prejudice  and  race  distinctions.  A  labor  system  is  fast  grow 
ing  up  about  this  idea — a  labor  system  as  much  opposed  to  the 
labor  system  of  the  rest  of  the  nation,  as  was  the  old  slave 
system  to  the  free  labor  of  the  North.  There  can  be  no  lasting 
peace  between  them  now,  any  more  than  such  peace  was  possible 
between  them  in  the  period  before  the  war.  The  political  and 
industrial  interests  of  the  sections  are  not  the  same,  and  cannot 
be  made  the  same  so  long  as  differences  so  fundamental  in 
respect  to  government  and  labor  exist  between  them.  The 
conflict  of  the  two  contrary  ideas  of  government  of  the  two  con 
trary  labor  systems,  for  survivorship  in  the  Union,  may  be 
postponed  as  it  is  today,  but  it  cannot  be  extinguished  except 
by  the  extinction  of  one  or  the  other  of  the  old  rivals.  For 
they  are  doomed  in  one  form  or  another,  by  economic  and 
social  laws,  to  ceaseless  rivalry  and  strife. 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  225 

In  this  strife  the  disfranchisement  of  the  Negro  by  the 
South  is  a  distinct  victory  for  the  Southern  idea,  for  the 
Southern  rival,  over  the  Northern  idea,  the  Northern  rival. 
The  southern  idea  has  taken  on  new  life,  is  re-sowing  itself, 
striking  powerful  roots  into  Southern  soil.  And  while  it  is 
steadily  strengthening  its  ascendency  over  those  states,  its  pollen 
dust  is  slowly  spreading  in  many  devious  ways,  blown  by  winds 
of  destiny  beyond  the  limits  of  those  states,  attacking  with 
subtle,  far-reaching,  and  deep-reaching  influences  the  democratic 
idea  of  the  rest  of  the  nation,  giving  aid  and  form  to  all  those 
feelings,  thoughts,  purposes,  hidden  or  open,  but  active,  in  the 
republic,  hostile  to  popular  government,  to  the  democratic  prin 
ciple  of  equality  and  universal  suffrage.  The  South  has 
thrown  down  its  gage  of  battle  for  the  aristocratic  idea,  for  the 
labor  system  which  grows  out  of  that  idea.  This  gage  of 
battle  is  the  disfranchisement  of  the  Negro  because  he  is  a 
Negro  and  the  consequent  degradation  of  him  as  a  laborer.  Will 
the  North  accept  the  challenge  of  its  old  rival,  will  it  pick  up  the 
gage  of  battle  thus  thrown  down?  I  think  that  it  will.  I  am 
sure  that  it  will.  When?  I  confess  frankly  I  do  not  know.  But 
of  this  I  have  no  doubt,  when  this  time  comes,  as  come 
it  must,  the  Negro  will  mark  again,  as  he  did  formerly,  the 
dead  line  between  the  combatants — between  the  aristocratic  idea 
of  the  South  and  the  democratic  idea  of  the  rest  of  the  nation; 
between  the  labor  system  of  the  South  and  the  labor  system  of 
the  rest  of  the  nation. 


THE  BALLOTLESS  VICTIM  OF  ONE-PARTY 
GOVERNMENTS  1 

The  legal  status  of  the  Negro  in  the  United  States  is  dif 
ficult  to  define  or  describe,  because  on  paper  he  is  an  American 
citizen,  entitled  to  the  rights  of  an  American  citizen,  but  in 
practice  lie  does  not  get  what  he  is  entitled  to  or  anything  like 
it  in  certain  parts  of  the  Republic.  His  life  is  safe-guarded 
by  written  law,  and  so  is  his  liberty  and  his  activities  in  pur 
suit  of  happiness  and  to  better  his  condition.  Moreover  in 
order  that  he  may  protect  himself  against  the  predatory  aggres- 

1  From    article    by    Archibald    H.    Grimke.     American    Negro    Academy. 
Occasional    papers    no.    16.    i8p.    Washington,    1913. 


226  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

sion  and  greed  of  other  citizens  he  is  invested  by  the  supreme 
law  of  the  land  with  the  right  to  vote,  with  a  voice  in  the 
Government,  to  enable  him  to  defend  himself  against  the  enact 
ment  of  bad  and  unequal  laws  and  against  their  bad  and  une 
qual  administration.  Certainly  the  Negro  seems  to  be  the  equal 
in  rights  of  any  other  American.  That  he  is  on  paper  there 
is  not  a  doubt,  but  that  he  is  not  in  reality  there  is  not  a  doubt 
either.  What  he  is  entitled  to  does  not  anywhere  in  the  South 
and  in  some  states  of  the  North  square  itself  with  what  he 
actually  enjoys.  There  is  an  enormous  discrepancy  in  his 
case  between  National  promise  or  guarantees  and  National  per 
formance  or  possessions.  He  is  an  American  citizen  under 
the  National  Constitution.  To  be  sure  he  is,  but  with  a  big 
qualification.  He  has  the  right  to  reach  up  and  out  and  to 
grow  in  every  direction  like  other  American  citizens  whose 
race  and  color  are  different  from  his  own.  Not  a  doubt 
of  it  in  legal  theory  but  when  he  puts  his  theoretical  rights  to 
the  test  of  fact  he  finds  that  he  is  different,  that  he  may  not 
do  many  of  the  things  which  white  men  all  about  him  are 
doing  all  the  time.  He  finds  that  even  the  Chinese  who  are 
denied  citizenship  in  the  Republic,  receiver  better  treatment, 
are  accorded  larger  liberties  as  men  than  are  allowed  him  in 
the  South. 

A  citizen  without  the  ballot  in  America  is  in  fact,  whatever 
he  may  be  in  law,  a  de-citizenized  man— exposed  in  consequence 
to  the  enmities,  the  jealousies,  the  insults  and  the  violence  of 
other  citizens  who  are  more  fortunate  in  this  regard.  He  is, 
whatever  may  be  his  legal  status  on  paper,  a  proscribed  man, 
subject  to  unmerited  and  unmeasured  ignominies  and  injus 
tices  at  the  hands  of  his  country,  its  society,  its  passions  and 
prejudices.  Governor  Andrew  was  right,  a  disfranchised  man, 
a  disfranchised  class  must  become  ultimately,  "The  hopeless 
pariah  of  a  merciless  civilization."  This  is  the  peril,  the  fate 
which  hangs  over  the  colored  race  at  the  close  of  the  first 
fifty  years  of  its  emancipation. 

Governor  Andrew's  scheme  for  the  reconstruction  of  the 
rebel  states  included  not  only  the  extension  of  the  suffrage  to 
the  blacks  but  the  re-admission  to  their  full  citizenship  of  the 
class  of  old  slaveholders  who  had  carried  those  states  out  of 
the  Union.  They  were  needed  as  leaders  in  the  work  of  res 
toration  and  reconstruction,  he  shrewdly  argued.  And  he  was 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  227 

right.  They  were  indeed  the  natural  leaders  of  the  South, 
and  had  they  turned  their  backs  upon  the  past  and  faced 
patriotically  the  new  problems  and  the  new  posture  of  their 
affairs  they  might  have  led  both  races  into  the  promised  land 
of  freedom  and  peace  and  Southern  industrial  expansion  and 
greatness.  Had  they  seized  their  golden  opportunity  for  pro 
gressive  and  constructive  statesmanship,  the  sceptre  of  their  as 
cendency  in  the  governments  of  their  section  could  not  have 
been  wrested  from  them  by  another  class  of  whites,  risen  since 
the  war,  who  distrust  and  hate  them,  but  they  might  instead 
have  transmitted  their  ascendency  undiminished  to  their  de 
scendants,  who  ought  to  be,  today,  the  leaders  of  the  new  South. 

Under  unequal  conditions,  the  white  man  is  immune  from 
legislation  and  administration  unfriendly  to  his  class,  while 
the  black  man  is  exposed  to  the  aggression  of  this  favored  class, 
either  directly  through  mobs  or  indirectly  through  hostile 
legislation  and  administration,  which  fix  upon  him  the  brand 
of  a  caste  whose  members  have  no  rights  in  Southern  society 
which  white  men  are  bound  to  respect.  Such  social  injus 
tice  and  political  inequality  as  exist  between  the  races  in  the 
South  are  bad  for  the  whites  as  they  are  bad  for  the  blacks 
— are  very  bad  for  their  collective  interests  and  for  the  Na 
tional  interests  of  the  great  industrial  democracy  of  which 
they  form  a 'part.  Is  it  astonishing  then  that  under  such 
circumstances  there  have  sprung  up  and  flourish  in  the  South 
the  peonage  and  convict  lease  systems,  the  plantation  lease  and 
credit  systems,  contract  labor  and  "Jim  Crow"  laws,  lynching 
and  inequitable  distribution  of  the  public  school  funds  between 
the  races?  For  the  Southern  white  man,  and  he  is  no  dif 
ferent  from  any  other  white  man  or  black  man  either  for 
that  matter  who  possesses  irresponsible  power  over  others, 
regulates  his  conduct  toward  the  Negro  in  his  midst  by  the 
law  of  might,  which  allows  him  with  a  good  conscience  to  do 
to  the  Negro  whatever  he  wants  to  do,  and  to  take  from  him 
whatever  he  wants  to  take,  whether  life  or  liberty;  while  it 
forbids  his  victim  to  do  what  he  wants  to  do,  or  to  retain 
what  belongs  to  him  as  an  American  citizen  whether  it  be 
his  life  or  his  liberty— that  is,  to  do  so  by  identically  the 
same  means  which  white  men  use  to  retain  what  belongs  to 
them  under  similar  circumstances. 

Things  would  undoubtedly  be  different  for  the  colored  people 


228  SELECTED  ARTICLES 

in  those  states  had  they,  though  slight,  some  positive  and  ap 
preciable  influence  at  the  polls.  Their  condition  would  not 
even  then  be  ideal— far  from  it.  But  their  hard  lot  as  men 
would  improve,  their  worth  as  citizens,  their  social  and  indus 
trial  value  to  their  community,  state  and  country  would  rise 
correspondingly  in  the  scale  of  being  and  character,  with  the 
increased  freedom,  self-respect  and  security  which  in  conse 
quence  would  come  to  them  as  a  race.  Legislatures  and  ad 
ministrative  officers  would  begin  to  make  some  response  to 
their  claim  for  social  justice  and  political  rights,  and  the 
courts  would  begin,  also,  to  lend  a  more  attentive  ear  to  their 
rights  of  person  and  property.  The  end  of  all  those  terrible 
systems  which  exploit  and  rob  and  oppress  them  and  keep 
them  poor  and  ignorant  and  weak,  the  sad  victims  of  race 
prejudice  and  greed  and  cruelty,  would  grow  nearer  to  the 
perfect  day  of  the  race's  final  deliverance  as  American  citizens. 
They  would  begin  to  get  for  their  children  more  and  better 
schools  and  longer  school  terms,  and  for  their  teachers  more 
equal  pay  as  compared  with  that  received  by  white  teachers 
for  similar  service. 

Such  is  the  deplorable  situation  of  the  Negro  in  the  South 
at  the  --close  of  the- -first  fifty  years  of  his  freedom.  There 
will  be  no  improvement  in  that  situation  to  any  material  ex 
tent  until  he  gets  the  ballot,  a  voice  in  the  government  of 
those  states.  He  can  not  obtain  a  voice  in  those  governments 
of  and  by  himself.  He  must  get  help  from  some  power  out 
side  of  himself.  But  from  whom  and  in  what  direction  ought 
he  to  look  for  it?  Not  certainly  from  the  Nprth,  from  the 
Republican  Party.  For  they  gave  up  long  ago  trying  to  solve 
the  problem  how  to  make  a  vote  in  that  section  count  as  much 
as  a  vote  in  the  solid  South.  They  will  not  again  enact  a 
Force  Bill  or  attempt  to  do  so  or  anything  like  it.  They  have 
during  recent  years  made  no  movement  to  execute  that  clause 
of  the  Fourteenth  Amendment  which  provides  for  a  reduc 
tion  of  Southern  representation  in  the  lower  branch  of  Con 
gress  proportioned  to  the  number  of  the  disfranchised  male 
population  of  those  states,  and  they  have  in  fact  no  disposi 
tion  to  do  so.  On  the  contrary  non-interference  is  the  ominous 
word  which  now  gags  the  Northern  people  and  press,  its  pulpit 
and  platform  and  hobbles  the  action  of  the  general  govern 
ment.  Indeed,  the  outgoing  occupant  of  the  White  House  has 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  229 

carried  the  policy  of  non-interference  to  extreme  limits.  For 
he  it  is  who  laid  down  the  rule  at  the  beginning  of  his  ad 
ministration,  and  has  observed  it  strictly  for  four  years,  that 
it  would  be  unwise  to  make  appointments  of  colored  men  to 
federal  office  in  the  South  whenever  the  South  objects  to  such 
appointments.  In  consequence  of  the  consistent  enforcement 
of  this  rule  colored  federal  office-holders  in  the  South  are  like 
angels'  visits  to  that  section,  few  and  far  between.  The  South, 
as  we  have  seen,  has  succeeded  most  thoroughly  in  depriving 
the  Negro  in  its  midst  of  any  voice  in  its  governments  and 
it  has  shut  him  out  of  state  offices,  and  now  thanks  to  Presi 
dent  Taft,  has  at  last  succeeded  in  depriving  him  of  holding 
federal  office  in  its  midst  likewise. 

But  there  yet  remains  to  the  Southern  colored  man  the 
tattered  and  bedraggled  remnant  of  his  citizenship-,ia_that  sec 
tion,  if  indeed  even  that  will  be  left  him  four  years  hence. 
I  refer  to  his  quadrennial  appearance  as  a  delegate  in  Repub 
lican  National  Conventions,  where  for  a  brief  hour  he  enjoys 
the  spotlight  importance  of  a  political  supernumerary  on  the 
party  stage.  Since  1884,  there  has  been  an  increasing  inclina 
tion  among  Republican  leaders  to  reduce  the  representation  of 
the  party's  Southern  wing  in  National  Conventions  to  a  num 
ber  proportioned  to  the  size  of  its  vote  on  election  day.  But  the 
leaders  have  not  yet  got  their  courage  to  the  sticking  point 
to  tackle  this  proposition,  perhaps  because  they  have  not  been 
willing  to  tackle  the  prior  one  of  a  reduction  of  Southern 
representation  in  Congress,  and  perhaps  for  other  good  and 
sufficient  considerations  of  an  emergency  character  they  have 
allowed  the  matter  to  drift  and  to  let  for  the  time  being  well 
enough  alone. 

Just  at  this  point  let  me  refer  in  passing  to  sundry  causes 
which  are  affecting  adversely  the  Negro's  status  as  a  citizen, 
and  are  contributing  by  their  collateral  pressure  to  force  him 
into  a  sort  of  political  and  industrial  blind  alley  of  our 
American  civilization.  The  Southern  propaganda  against  the 
Negro  is  advancing  apace  in  the  North  by  many  dark  and 
devious  ways  and  by  many  subtle  and  potent  means.  Northern 
capital  and  enterprise,  which  are  exploiting  the  South  indus 
trially,  assimilate  very  readily  the  Southern  view  of  the  Negro, 
who  must  be  kept  at  the  bottom  of  the  white  man's  labor  sys 
tem  and  civilization.  Intermarriage  of  Northern  men  and 


230  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

women  with  Southern  men  and  women  helps  tremendously 
the  propagation  of  the  Southern  view  and  solution  of  the  race 
problem.  The  annual  meeting  and  mingling  at  the  National 
Capital  in  social  intercoure  -of  the  wealth  and  fashion  and 
leadership  of  both  sections  exerts  a  powerful  influence  in  ac 
centing  points  of  agreement  rather  than  points  of  difference 
between  them.  The  feeling  has  risen  throughout  the  North 
that  the  white  people  of  the  country  can  not  afford  either  in 
terms  of  business  or  of  politics  to  quarrel  among  themselves 
over  the  rights  and  wrongs  of  another  race,  which  in  con 
sequence  of  the  injustices  and  inequalities  suffered  by  it  at 
their  hands,  is  being  pushed  brutally  to  the  wall.  The  whites 
of  both  sections  make  themselves  believe,  as  a  sort  of  salve 
to  their  conscience,  I  suppose,  that  the  Negro  in  their  midst 
is  an  alien  race,  is  a  non-assimilable  element  in  the  body  politic, 
whose  ejectment  or  isolation  the  health  of  that  body  and  the 
race  purity  of  the  whites  render  necessary.  Since  ejectment 
is  impracticable  as  involving  too  huge  a  displacement  of  or 
amputation  from  the  productive  labor  of  the  South,  isolation 
remains  the  only  alternative.  The  whites  of  course  will  do  what 
they  can  without  injuring  themselves  or  corrupting  their  race 
ideals,  or  affronting  their  race  prejudices  to  alleviate  the  in 
evitably  hard  lot  of  this  unfortunate  people.  But  in  what  may 
be  done  for  them  there  must  be  a  care  not  to  mix  with  it  any 
foolish  sentiment  of  human  liberty  and  brotherhood  lest  it  give 
offense  to  the  South  and  so  interrupt  the  flow  of  that  beautiful 
and  brotherly  affection  which  is  increasingly  making  the 
Southern  whites  and  the  Northern  whites  one  people  in  the 
bonds  of  an  indissoluble  friendship  and  union.  Non-inter 
ference  is  the  ominous  word  which  has  cast  its  dark  spell  over 
the  North  and  has  turned  its  once  warm  and  active  sympathy 
into  cold  indifference  and  cruel  apathy. 

We  had  better  look  at  the  situation  of  the  Negro  in  the 
United  States  today  without  blinking  the  facts,  see  it  clear 
and  see  it  straight.  The  present  outlook  for  that  race  is 
gloomy  and  depressing,  and  this  gloom  and  depression  are  na 
tion-wide.  Until  the  Negro  gets  in  the  South  some  measurable 
freedom  in  the  use  of  the  ballot,  .the  present  agencies  at  work 
for  his  advancement,  like  industrial  and  tKe  "rrigkstrdafktcation 
and  the  acquisition  of  property,  and  organized  agitation  in  the 
North  for  his  rights,  can  do  little  to  rescue  him  from  the  deep 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  23] 

pit  into  which  American  race  prejudice  has  pushed  and  penned 
him.  The  colored  American  child  has  a  poorer  chance  to  rise 
in  the  scale  of  being  today  than  had  the  colored  American 
child  of  a  generation  ago.  He  has  a  poorer  chance  in  the 
South  in  spite  of  his  increased  educational  opportunities  and 
accomplishments,  and  he  has  a  poorer  chance  in  the  North. 
For  as  the  condition  of  the  race  grows  worse  and  its  citizen 
ship  deteriorates  politically  and  civilly  in  the  South,  it  will 
communicate  to  that  part  of  it  resident  in  the  North  some 
thing  of  its  own  sad  lot,  legal  and  industrial  limitations  and 
contracting  prospects  and  opportunities.  This  is  the  inevitable 
fate  of  a  ballotless  race  or  class  in  an  industrial  democracy 
like  ours.  Such  is  the  fate  which  awaits  the  American  Negro 
unless  he  can  manage  to  get  the  right  to  vote  in  the  South. 
And  this  fate  he  can  not  escape  so  long  as  he  remains  a  bal 
lotless  man — with  no  weapon  of  defense  against  the  white 
man's  race  prejudice,  which  is  regnant  in  his  home  and  church 
and  government  and  press  and  mills  and  shops  and  trades  and 
schools.  It  is  as  impossible  for  the  Negro  to  escape  from  his 
blind  alley  without  the  ballot  as  it  is  for  some  foolish  fly,  im 
prisoned  on  a  window  pane,  to  find  its  way  to  freedom  through 
it.  There  is  no  escape  for  the  fly  until  its  restless  activities 
discover  the  right  direction,  and,  to  change  the  figure,  there 
is  none  for  the  Negro  out  of  his  slough  of  despondency  until  he 
can  lay  hold  of  the  ballot.  Wanting  the  ballot  no  amount  of 
education  and  wealth  in  the  South  and  of  agitation  in  the 
North  will  of  themselves  be  able  to  make  Southern  Govern- 
ments_ jresponsive  to  the  needs  and  the  rights  of  the  Negro  as 
laborer  and  citixcn.  But  until  they  are  made  to  respond  to  his 
claim  for  social  justice  and  civil  rights  he  will  continue  in 
the  future  as  he  is  today  the  helpless  victim  of  the  peonage 
and  convict  lease  systems,  of  the  plantation  lease  and  credit 
systems,  of  contract  labor  and  "Jim  Crow"  laws,  of  lynching 
and  the  inequitable  distribution  of  the  public  school  funds 
between  the  races.  I  can  not  repeat  too  often  that  such 
monstrous  depression  of  a  part  of  Southern  labor  is  not  less 
bad  for  the  whites  than  it  is  for  the  blacks.  Nothing  else 
can  possibly  come  of  it  in  the  future  than  has  come  of  it  in  the 
past  but  evil  to  the  South,  arrested  development  and  a  back 
ward  civilization.  For  the  whites  cannot  advance  in  law  and 
order,  in  private  and  public  morals,  in  wealth  and  in  industrial 


232  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

intelligence  and  efficiency  with  the  speed  commensurate  with 
their  social  and  sectional  opportunity  if  they  persist  in  wast 
ing  so  much  of  their  individual  and  collective  energies  in 
keeping  the  Negro  down  at  the  bottom  of  their  social  and 
political  fabric  without  regard  to  his  merits  and  abilities. 

Low  water  mark  has  been  reached  in  the  ebb  tide  of  Negro 
citizenship  in  the  South.  Once  upon  a  time,  the  race  was  repre 
sented  in  Congress,  but  today  the  tribe  of  the  Negro  Congress 
men  is  extinct  and  has  long  been  extinct.  A  few  years  ago 
it  had  its  representatives  on  the  Republican  National  Com 
mittee,  but  today  the  tribe  of  the  National  Committeeman  is 
extinct. 


NEGRO  SUFFRAGE1 

In  the  long  run  only  voters  have  rights  in  this  country.  The 
politicians,  whether  they  hold  executive  office  or  sit  in  legis 
latures,  know,  respect,  and  fear  the  "labor  vote,"  the  "temper 
ance  vote,"  the  "soldier  vote,"  the  "suffrage  vote,"  and  every 
other  vote,  but  they  have  no  thought  to  spare  for  any  class  that 
has  no  vote.  The  non-voters  are  defenceless,  their  needs  are 
not  considered,  their  rights  are  not  defended,  and  no  body  of 
taxpayers  can  long  remain  in  that  position.  "Taxation  without 
representation  is  tyranny,"  whether  the  taxpayer  is  black  or 
white,  and  if  men  are  counted  as  voters  when  the  number  of 
Congressmen  or  presidential  electors  is  determined,  and  yet  are 
not  allowed  to  cast  their  votes,  those  who  profit  by  the  system 
exercise  an  undue  influence  in  the  councils  of  the  Nation  to 
which  their  fellow-citizens  will  not  long  submit.  The  solid 
South  rests  upon  the  .suppressed  Negro  vote,' and  it  creates  a 
political  situation  which  cannot  endure.  Both  the  colored  tax 
payer,  whose  vote  is  wholly  suppressed,  and  the  white  voter  in 
the  North  and  \Yest,  whose  vote  is  partly  neutralized  and  so 
partly  suppressed,  are  bound  to  oppose  it.  Does  it  help  the 
communities  which  refuse  to  recognize  the  political  rights  of  the 
Negro?  Does  it  insure  them  good  government  to  let  their 
political  life  hinge  on  a  single  question?  Is  it  wise  to  let  a  whole 

1  From  article,  National  Aspects  of  the  Negro  Problem,  by  Moorfield 
Storey,  President  of  the  Association  for  the  Advancement  of  the  Colored 
People.  Southern  Workman.  49:349-55-  August,  1920. 


THE   NEGRO   PROBLEM  233 

government  rest  on  injustice  to  its  citizens  as  a  corner-stone? 
What  must  be  the  political  and  moral  tone  of  men  who  see  the 
laws  habitually  spurned  or  evaded  by  the  men  who  are  chosen 
to  govern  them?  Is  it  an  example  which  is  likely  to  promote 
good  citizenship  and  love  of  justice  among  the  citizens  who  are 
the  soil  from  which  government  springs?  If  they  are  just  their 
rulers  will  be  just  and  not  otherwise. 


HAS  THE  FIFTEENTH  AMENDMENT  BEEN 
JUSTIFIED1 

As  is  generally  known,  the  Thirteenth  Amendment  made  the 
Negro  a  free  man ;  the  Fourteenth  made  him  a  citizen  with  all 
the  rights  of  a  citizen,  and  aimed  to  stimulate  the  States  to 
grant  him  suffrage;  the  Fifteenth  Amendment  guaranteed  him 
that  his  right  of  vote  should  be  free  from  any  State  interference 
or  discriminations  on  the  ground  of  "race,  color  or  previous 
condition  of  servitude."  Thus  the  late  slave  suddenly  found 
himself  promoted  to  the  high  exercise  of  the  franchise ;  elevated 
from  the  low  estate  of  a  mere  chattel  to  become  the  maker 
and  builder  of  the  state. 

The  circumstances  attending  the  adoption  of  the  Fifteenth 
Amendment  must  be  examined,  and  they  form  a  record  we 
cannot  be  proud  of. 

To  "reconstruct"  the  seceded  States  meant  two  things :  first, 
to  settle  their  relations  to  the  rest  of  the  Union,  and  second,  to 
make  proper  provisions  for  the  emancipated  slaves. 

The  death  of  Abraham  Lincoln,  coming  at  this  critical  period, 
was  a  catastrophe  that  precipitated  such  a  train  of  evils  as  the 
centuries  cannot  heal.  To  fix  the  status  of  the  helpless  Negro 
needed  his  statecraft,  his  wisdom,  yes  and  his  kindness.  The 
South  did  not  find  a  generous  victor  in  the  North,  after  he 
was  removed  from  the  head  of  the  nation.  Jefferson  and 
Lincoln  had  both  declared  that  the  white  and  black  races  in 
the  South  could  not  live  together  in  peace  under  a  condition 
of  political  and  social  equality.  As  Judge  Curtis  informs  us, 
Lincoln  intended  to  leave  the  question  of  suffrage  with  the 

1  From  article  by  James  E.  Boyle,  University  of  Wisconsin,  Madison, 
Wis.  Arena.  31:481-8.  May,  1904. 


234  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

States,  knowing  that  no  country  would  be  fit  to  live  in  which 
should  be  dominated  by  uneducated  and  ignorant  blacks  just 
emancipated  from  a  condition  of  abject  servitude. 

Lincoln  himself,  just  before  his  death,  prepared  a  proc 
lamation  for  the  restoration  of  South  Carolina.  The  radicals 
in  Congress,  anxious  to  administer  severer  "punishment  to  the 
rebels,"  considered  this  an  abuse  of  executive  power  and  de 
nounced  Lincoln  for  having  perpetrated  "a  studied  outrage  on 
the  legislative  rights  of  the  people." 

If  Lincoln  was  denounced  thus  by  Congress  for  his  honest 
and  humane  efforts  at  reconstruction,  what  was  to  be  expected 
when  his  successor  took  the  helm?  If  Lincoln  had  lived,  he 
would  doubtless  have  been  strong  enough,  to  carry  his  policy 
through,  despite  the  opposition  of  some  congressmen.  Johnson 
was  not  able  to  do  this.  We  have  John  Sherman's  word  for  it 
(Senate  speech,  February,  1866)  that  Johnson's  plan  was 
practically  the  same  as  Lincoln's,  and  to  consist  of  the  following 
steps:  (a)  retain  Lincoln's  cabinet,  (6)  keep  Lincoln's  policy, 
(c)  require  adoption  of  the  Thirteenth  Amendment  as  part  of 
the  State  Constitutions  of  the  South,  (d)  require  repudiation 
of  Rebel  debt,  (e}  secure  protection  to  freedmen. 

The  plan  was  simple  and  plain.  Negro  suffrage  was  not  men 
tioned.  This  Lincoln-Johnson  plan  was  speedily  put  into  execu 
tion,  much  to  the  satisfaction  of  the  South  and  the  dissatisfac 
tion  of  Congress.  The  issue  was  stated  plainly,  dogmatically  in 
the  House  in  these  words :  "The  President  lacks  power  to  re 
construct.  Congress  alone  h'as  this  ^pftWen  The  Presicfent  is 
commander-in-chief  of  the  armies,  but  Congress  is  his  com 
mander,  and,  *T5ocl^willing,  he  shall  obey." 

This  was  the  sftflil  and  temper  of  reconstruction  as  grimly 
announced  and  brutally  carried  out  by  Congress !  The  struggle 
between  Congress  and  the  PresidgniMyill  not  be  recounted  here. 
It  is  sufricientTo"~5ay  ThaF  coercion  was  the*l)o1icyofT^ongress, 
and  Johnson's  "ex-rebel  State  governments"  were  swept  away. 
This  course  naturally  appealed  to  the  South  as  brutal  and 
humiliating.  The  Fourteenth  Amendment  staggered  her  by  dis 
franchising  the  leading  whites  and  making  voters  of  ex-slaves. 
The  patriotic  and  generous  States  of  Ohio  and  New  Jersey  even 
withdrew  their  consent  to  this  amendment  when  they  saw  its 
full  significance  and  potency  for  evil.  The  fall  elections  of 
1867  in  the  North  showed  an  overwhelming  revolt  against  Negro 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  235 

suffrage,  the  States  of  Connecticut,  New  Jersey,  Pennsylvania, 
Ohio  and  California  becoming  democratic  on  anti-Negro-suf 
frage  resolutions.  If  the  colored  vote  was  intolerable  at  the 
North  where  Negroes  were  few  and  partially  educated,  how 
galling  must  the  yoke  have  been  for  the  South  where  in  some 
States  the  Negroes  were  in  the  majority  and  all  hopelessly 
ignorant. 

It  is  hardly  possible  to  picture  the  condition  of  the  South  at 
this  time,  exhausted  by  a  long  war  for  a  lost  cause,  subjugated 
to  a  protracted  military  occupancy  in  time  of  peace,  dazed  by  a 
cataclysm  in  her  industrial  foundations,  and  trembling  with 
fear  of  a  possible  black  supremacy.  Yet  Congress  was  to  use 
its  club  once  more  on  its  staggering  victim.  The  Fifteenth 
Amendment  wa  spasspHjim^  enforced  hv  "appropriate  legislation." 
The  SotttiT~wa!rTiFeralJy%orn  of  the  bayonet,"  reconstruction 
was  complete,  and  the  unheard-of  experiment  of  general  and 
unqualified  Negro  suffrage  was  on. 

Before  tracing  the  workings  of  the  Fifteenth  Amendment 
it  is  well  to  notice  what  was  claimed  to  be  its  purpose  when 
it  was  adopted.  Then  we  can  measure  its  success  in  fulfilling 
its  purpose.  All  the  arguments  put  forth  by  the  supporters  of 
the  amendment  at  the  time  of  its  adoption  may  be  reduced  to 
five: 

(a)  The  franchise  would  benefit  the  colored  race  and 
secure  to  them  importance,  respect  and  protection. 

(&)  The  exercise  of  the  ballot  would  educate  the  Negro  in 
practical  citizenship. 

O)  It  would  be  a  public  benefit,  safeguarding  the  country 
against  unfriendly  legislation  at  the  South,  and  avoiding  the 
possible  danger  of  irritating  the  Negroes  of  that  section  by 
political  discriminations  against  them. 

(d)  Allies  would  be  gained  for  the  Republican  party.  Party 
managers  considered  the  ascendency  of  the  Republican  party 
(self-styled  "Union"  party)  absolutely  essential  to  the  safety 
and  preservation  of  the  nation. 

(?)  The  amendment  would  be,  according  to  speakers  in  Con 
gress,  proper  punishment  for  the  "rebels."  As  Stevens  put  it: 
"If  it  be  a  punishment  for  traitors,  they  deserve  it." 

These,  then,  were  the  reasons  assigned  for  the  amendment. 
\  It  remains  to  trace  the  actual  workings  of  the  amendment 
during  the  few  years  it  was  put  in  practice. 


236  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

We  commonly  accept  the  dictum  of  Guizot's  that:  "Of  all 
systems  of  government,  the  most  difficult  to  establish  and  ren 
der  effective,  the  one  which  evidently  requires  the  greatest 
maturity  of  reason,  of  morality,  of  civilization  in  the  society 
to  which  it  is  applied,  is  the  federative  system  of  the  United 
States."  But  mark  the  strikingly  contrary  conditions  of  affairs 
in  the  South  when  the  Fifteenth  Amendment  went  into  opera 
tion  and  the  "disloyal"  whites  were  disfranchised.  Three  classes 
remain, — a  few  southern  whites  loyal  to  the  Union  through  the 
war;  the  Negroes,  ignorant  and  destitute  of  all  political  ideas 
whatever;  and  the  carpet-baggers  and  agents  of  the  Freed- 
men's  Bureau. 

Negroes  were  in  the  majority,  and  the  cry  of  "black  domi 
nation"  was  taken  up  by  the  proud  and  haughty  South. 
Leadership  fell  to  the  zealous  carpet-baggers  who  soon  organized 
the  Negroes  for  election  purposes.  Then  began  the  memorable 
regime  of  the  carpet-bagger  and  the  Negro.  It  was  a  veritable 
reign  of  terror  for  the  South,  a  carnival  of  crime  and  corrup 
tion,  a  saturnalia  of  robbery  and  jobbery.  Hundreds  of  Negro 
justices  were  put  in  office  who  could  neither  read  nor  write. 
Ruinous  taxes  were  levied  on  the  property  of  the  southern 
whites,  for  the  Negro  had  no  property  and  the  business  of 
the  carpet-bagger  was  office-holding.  Public  debts  were  in 
creased  enormously  with  little  or  nothing  to  show  in  the  way 
of  public  improvements.  The  history  of  one  State  is  the  his 
tory  of  all.  We  have  the  facts  at  hand  for  South  Carolina,  as 
brought  out  by  the  joint  investigating  committee  there.  Of  the 
eight  recognized  classes  of  fraud,  the  chief  was  general  legis 
lative  corruption.  Under  the  expansive  term  "supplies"  the 
state  had  been  charged  up  with  the  following,  for  which 
vouchers  were  left  on  file :  "English  tapestry,  Brussels  carpet 
ing,  French  velvets,  silk  damask,  Irish  linen,  billiard-table 
cloths,  woollen  blankets,  ladies'  hoods,  ribbons,  crepe,  scissors, 
skirt-braid  and  pins,  tooth-brushes,  hooks-and-eyes,  boulevard 
skirts,  bustles,  chignons,  palpitators,  garters,  chemises,  parasols, 
gold  watches  and  chains,  jewelry,  diamond  rings,  knives,  pocket- 
pistols,  horses,  mules,  harness,  buggies  and  carriages." 

The  Negro  was  not  responsible  for  this  regime.  He  readily 
followed  the  so-called  guides  and  friends  who  came  in  from 
the  North  and  represented  that  party  to  which  the  Negro  owed 
his  freedom.  These  adventurers  made  tools  of  the  Negro, 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  237 

dividing  spoils  with  him  and  exploiting  his  ignorance  and 
superstition.  He  was  taught  that  to  scratch  a  name  on  a 
Republican  party  ticket  was  a  "sin  little  short  of  damnation." 

Such  a  state  of  affairs  was  too  violent  to  continue.  Spirited 
and  intolerant  Southerners  could  not  submit  to  Negro  domi 
nation.  Means  were  found  to  suppress  the  colored  vote.  Both 
legitimate  and  illegitimate  methods  were  freely  employed.  Men 
who  had  fought  bravely  four  years  to  establish  an  independent 
government  could  not  be  expected  to  submit  tamely  to  such  a 
monstrous  travesty  on  self-government.  Terror  was  spread 
by  the  Ku-Klux-Klan  in  some  regions,  while  more  moderate 
means  were  used  in  others.  Some  temperate  white  Republicans 
united  with  the  Democrats.  In  some  cases  Negroes  received 
pay  or  other  inducements  to  remain  away  from  the  polls.  By 
murders,  by  whippings,  by  threats,  by  promises,  by  fair  means 
and  foul,  thp  N^ro  vote  was  thoroughly  suppressed  by  i§77, 
and  has  been  kept  so  ever  since.  Negro  surfragetoday  in 
the  South  is  a  complete  nullity.  But  the  danger  is  still  present 
of  Negro  domination  in  those  regions  having  a  majority  of 
colored  citizens.  This  menace  disturbs  and  poisons  the  rela 
tions  of  the  two  races  forced  to  live  side  by  side. 

To  summarize  then,  the  five  purposes  of  the  amendment 
were,  in  reverse  order,  (i)  to  punish  the  rebels;  (2)  gain 
allies  for  the  Republican  party;  (3)  benefit  general  public;  (4) 
educate  Negro  in  citizenship;  (5)  protect  colored  race. 

It  signally  failed  in  all  these  purposes  but  the  first,  and 
there  is  exactly  where  it  should  have  failed.  For  the  "rebels" 
had  had  sufficient  punishment  and  needed  more  considerate 
and  generous  treatment. 

It  lost  the  Republican  party  several  northern  States,  and 
the  "solid  South." 

It  failed  utterly  from  the  public  benefit  standpoint,  which 
left  out  of  view  the  fact  that  intelligent  men  are  better  able 
to  legislate  for  their  own  welfare  than  are  ignorant  men  for 
them.  This  point,  however,  is  directly  connected  with  the  two 
following,  and  falls  to  the  ground  with  them. 

It  failed,  worse  than  failed,  to  educate  the  Negro  in  good 
citizenship.  He  found  himself  enfranchised  with  the  right  to 
barter  and  sell  his  vote,  or  hold  an  office  which  he  could  not 
fill.  He  immediately  fell  into  the  hands  of  professional  poli 
ticians,  and  in  this  school  of  rottenness  and  corruption  he 


238  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

became  a  plastic  tool  with  marvelous  facility.  If  this  was  the 
education  he  needed,  God  save  the  mark!  But  despite  his 
enfranchisement,  bulwarked  by  the  mighty  force  of  the  Fed 
eral  Constitution,  he  does  not  vote — south  of  Delaware — or 
make  himself  an  important  political  factor. 

That  the  colored  race  might  be  protected  was  the  fifth  pur 
pose  noted  above.  Here  was  the  saddest,  most  stupendous 
failure  of  all,  and  which  years  of  time  will  not  suffice  to 
remedy.  It  was  imagined  that  the  appointment  of  an  ignorant 
Negro  justice  would  protect  the  Negroes  in  his  vicinage.  But 
the  appointment  of  every  incompetent  Negro  fanned  the  pre 
judice  of  the  people  already  overwrought  in  sectional  feeling. 
It  took  from  the  Negro  his  only  true  friend,  the  one  com 
petent  to  understand,  advise  and  help  him, — his  master, — and 
made  him  his  enemy.  The  disfranchised  master  turned,  with 
the  instinct  of  self-preservation,  against  both  the  intruding 
carpet-bagger  and  his  tool — the  misguided  Negro.  The  Negro 
was  readily  led  to  believe  his  liberators  from  the  North  were 
blessed  saviors  to  him,  and  that  his  former  master  would 
reenslave  him  if  he  could.  Thus  race-prejudice  was  fostered, 
and  the  South  was  given  her  present  race  problem. 

Since  the  Negro  lost  both  ballot  and  friends  throughout  the 
South,  we  must  pronounce  this  experiment  in  political  science 
an  unqualified  failure.  The  right  to  thfe  ballot  is  the  capacity 
for  the  ballot. 

REPRESENTATION  * 

In  the  Constitutional  Convention  of  1787,  there  was  a  long 
and  heated  discussion  about  a  suitable  basis  for  representation 
in  the  lower  branch  of  Congress.  The  following  compromise 
clause  was  finally  adopted:  "Representatives,  and  direct  taxes 
shall  be  apportioned  among  the  several  States  which  may  be 
included  within  this  Union,  according  to  their  respective  num 
bers,  which  shall  be  determined  by  adding  to  the  whole  num 
ber  of  free  persons,  including  those  bound  to  service  for  a 
term  of  years,  and  excluding  Indians  not  taxed,  three-fifths 
of  all  other  persons." 

Thus  the   apportionment  of  representation   in  the   House   of 
Representatives  is  based  upon  the  population  in  the  respective 

1  From  Negro  Suffrage  and  Congressional  Representation,  by  James 
Albert  Hamilton,  p.  46-8.  Winthrop  Press.  New  York.  1910. 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  239 

States,  and  not  upon  the  number  of  votes  cast.  The  number 
of  votes  cast  would  not  offer  an  equitable  basis  of  apportion 
ment,  because  there  is  not  always  the  same  interest  in  elections. 
Some  years  we  have  what  is  termed  a  "light"  vote  and  other 
years  a  "heavy"  vote. 

At  the  close  of  the  Civil  War  in  1865,  the  population  for 
the  purposes  of  representation  had  been  largely  increased  in 
the  South,  from  the  fact  that  slavery  had  been  abolished,  and 
the  blacks  were  now  fully  counted  instead  of  only  three- 
fifths  as  before.  The  result  was,  the  Southern  States  found 
their  quota  in  the  House  of  Representatives  numerically  in 
creased. 

The  Northerners  would  not  tolerate  this  unless  there  was 
some  quid  pro  quo  forthcoming.  To  serve  as  a  punishment 
for  rebellion  and  as  a  protection  to  the  former  slaves  a  penalty 
in  the  shape  of  a  reduction  in  the  Southern  representation  was 
provided  in  the  Fourteenth  Amendment,  if  suffrage  was  denied 
the  Negro.  It  says :  "But  when  the  right  to  vote  at  any 
election  for  the  choice  of  electors  for  President  and  Vice- 
President  of  the  United  States,  Representatives  in  Congress, 
the  executive  and  judicial  officers  of  a  State,  or  the  members 
of  the  legislature  thereof,  is  denied  to  any  of  the  male  in 
habitants  of  such  State,  being  twenty-one  years  of  age,  and 
citizens  of  the  United  States,  or  in  any  way  abridged,  ex 
cept  for  participation  in  rebellion,  or  other  crime,  the  basis 
of  representation  therein  shall  be  reduced  in  the  proportion 
which  the  number  of  such  male  citizens  shall  bear  to  the  whole 
number  of  male  citizens,  twenty-one  years  of  age  in  such 
State." 

In_  1867,  the  federal  bay^n^t_^ml^he_Jjej^jQ — in  fyll 
possession  of  the  ballot  and  also  of  the  Southern  States, 
and  the  ex-Confederates  were  disqualified  for  public  office. 
Shortly  afterward,  the  Fifteenth  Amendment  was  adopted. 
Immediately  a  contest  arose  between  the  positive  law  of  the 
amendments,  and  the  natural  conditions  and  customs  of  the 
South.  In  every  such  contest  the  positive  law  is  overridden,  be 
cause  it  does  not  have  public  sanction.  As  Alexander 
Hamiliton  said:  "How  unequal  are  parchment  provisions  to 
struggle  with  public  necessity." 

Since  the  withdrawal  of  the  military,  Negro  suffrage 
and  Negro  control  have  been  swept  aside.  The  fact  is  that 


240  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

as  far  as  the  Negro  in  the  South  is  concerned,  the  Fifteenth 
Amendment  is  dead.  It  is  idle  to  argue  that  anything  short 
of  military  force  can  ever  restore  the  ballot  to  the  Negro. 

For  many  years,  the  Negro  appealed  to  the  sympathetic 
people  in  the  North  and  to  Congress  to  restore  the  ballot  to 
him,  and  many  so-called  "Force  Bills"  have  been  considered; 
but  there  is  a  growing  tendency  to  go  back  to  the  belief  that, 
after  all,  the  question  of  suffrage  is  one  belonging  entirely 
to  the  State  and  without  Federal  jurisdiction.  This  change  in 
public  sentiment  is  simply  the  swinging  of  the  pendulum  away 
from  the  ultra  centralization  and  federalism  following  the 
Civil  War. 

The  post-bellum  days  were  filled  with  the  most  bitter 
sectional  prejudice.  The  Southerners  nursed  their  resentment 
over  the  treatment  accorded  them  during  the  period  of  re 
construction,  and  the  Northerner  could  find  no  other  terms 
than  "rebel"  or  "traitor"  to  characterize  the  ex-Confederate. 
We"  were  politically  a  unit ;  but  divided  into  two  distinctively 
hostile  groups. 

With  the  adoption  of  the  new  Constitutions  in  the  South, 
a  great  hue  and  cry  has  been  raised  by  the  remnant  of  the 
old  abolitionists  and  suffrage  theorists,  and  a  general  allegation 
has  been  made  that  the  Fourteenth  and  Fifteenth  Amendments 
have  been  directly  violated,  As  a  consequence,  it  is  asserted  that 
the  Southern  States  should  be  duly  punished,  and  put  again 
under  compulsion.  An  analysis  of  this  contention  will  show 
that: 

(i)  As  far  as  the  Fourteenth  Amendment  is  concerned,  the 
only  punishment  which  could  be  meted  out  would  be  a  reduction 
in  representation.  Section  2  provides  for  such  a  contingency, 
by  demanding  reduction  wherever  there  is  any  restriction  of  the 
suffrage  "except  for  participation  in  rebellion  or  other  crime." 
Thus,  unless  followed  by  a  proportionate  loss  of  representation, 
we  should  not  have : 

(1)  Property  or  educational  qualifications; 

(2)  Payment    of   poll  tax; 

(3)  Requirement  of  residence  for  a  term  of  years; 

(4)  Requirement  of  registration; 

(5)  Disfranchisement  of  paupers,  idiots  and  insane. 
Professor    Burgess,    in    speaking    of    this    penalizing    second 

clause  of  the  Fourteenth  Amendment,  says:    "The  Congress  has 


THE   NEGRO   PROBLEM  241 

not  created  the  means  and  measures  for  carrying  this  threatened 
reduction  of  representation  into  execution,  nor  have  the  courts 
given  judicial  interpretation  to  the  words  of  the  clauses.  We, 
therefore,  do  not  know  whether,  in  order  to  warrant  the  re 
duction  of  representation,  denial  or  abridgment  of  the  right  to 
vote  must  be  by  a  law  of  the  Commonwealth,  or  by  an  officer 
of  the  Commonwealth,  or  whether  the  act  of  a  combination  of 
private  persons,  which  the  Commonwealth  either  cannot  or  will 
not  control,  would  come  within  the  meaning  of  the  provision. 
The  language  is  that  whenever  the  right  to  vote  is  denied,  etc. 
It  does  not  designate  by  whom.  In  the  previous  section  of  the 
article  it  is  expressly  provided  that  the  denials,  deprivations 
and  abridgments  there  spoken  of,  must  be  made  by  the  Com 
monwealth  in  order  to  warrant  the  interference  of  the  govern 
ment  of  the  United  States  in  behalf  of  the  person  receiving  the 
injury.  What  does  the  omission  of  this  phrase  in  the  second 
section  indicate?  Is  it  fortuitous,  or  was  it  intended  to  ma)ce 
the  Commonwealth  responsible  in  this  case  for  the  unlawful  acts 
of  its  citizens?  Sound  political  science  would  approve  the 
latter  interpretation ;  but  we  must  await  the  legislation  of 
Congress  and,  after  that,  the  final  adjudication  of  a  case  in 
point  by  the  Supreme  Court,  before  we  can  pronounce  this  to 
be  the  settled  principle  of  our  public  law." 

(2)  There  is  excellent  authority  for  the  belief  that  the  Fif 
teenth  Amendment  abrogates  and  supersedes  Section  2  of  the 
Fourteenth  Amendment,  for  it  distinctly  prohibits  exclusion 
from  the  suffrage  on  account  of  race,  color,  and  previous 
condition  of  servitude. 

Hon.  James  G.  Elaine,  who  was  largely  instrumental  in  the 
shaping  and  adoption  of  the  post-bellum  amendment,  says : 
"When,  therefore,  the  nation,  by  subsequent  change  in  its 
constitution,  declared  that  the  State  shall  not  exclude  the  Negro 
from  the  right  of  suffrage,  it  neutralized  and  surrendered  the 
contingent  right  before  held,  to  exclude  him  from  the  basis 
of  apportionment.  Congress  is  thus  plainly  deprived  by  the 
Fifteenth  Amendment  of  certain  powers  over  representation  in 
the  South,  which  it  previously  possessed  under  the  provisions  of 
the  Fourteenth  Amendment.  Before  the  adoption  of  the  Fif 
teenth  Amendment,  if  a  State  should  exclude  the  Negro  from 
suffrage,  the  next  step  would  be  for  Congress  to  exclude  the 
Negro  from  the  basis  of  apportionment.  After  the  adoption 


242  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

of  the  Fifteenth  Amendment,  if  a  State  should  exclude  the 
Negro  from  suffrage,  the  next  step  would  be  for  the  Supreme 
Court  to  declare  that  the  act  was  unconstitutional,  and,  there 
fore,  null  and  void.  The  essential  and  inestimable  value  of  the 
Fourteenth  Amendment  still  remains  in  the  three  other  sections, 
and  preeminently  in  the  first  section." 

Congress  cannot  enforce  the  penalty  for  disfranchisement 
provided  for  in  Section  2  of  the  Fourteenth  Amendment.  The 
Fifteenth  Amendment  supersedes  the  Fourteenth.  The  Fif 
teenth  Amendment  distinctly  prohibits  disfranchisement  on  ac 
count  of  race,  color,  etc.  The  Fourteenth  permitted  this  with 
a  penalty.  Therefore  any  disfranchisement  on  account  of  race, 
color,  etc.,  would  be  contrary  to  the  Fifteenth  Amendment, 
and  consequently  void.  If  void,  how  could  it  form  the  basis 
for  reduction  in  representation?  To  enforce  the  second  clause 
of  the  Fourteenth  Amendment  would  require  the  repeal  of  the 
Fifteenth  Amendment.  The  repeal  of  the  Fifteenth  Amend 
ment  would  leave  the  question  of  suffrage  where  the  Con 
stitution  originally  placed  it,  to  wit,  in  the  hands  of  the 
several  States.  It  would  then  be  entirely  discretionary  for  the 
State  to  give  suffrage  to  the  Negroes  if  it  chooses,  just  as 
it  can  give  it  to  women  if  it  chooses.  If  the  Negro  were  not 
permitted  to  exercise  the  special  privilege  of  suffrage,  it  would 
in  no  way  deprive  him  of  his  civil  rights  which  he  enjoys  the 
same  as  women.  Having  the  ballot  thrust  upon  him  without 
the  proper  intellectual  and  moral  training,  the  Negro  has  come 
to  believe  that  he  is  not  only  on  the  same  political  equality  but 
also  social  equality  with  the  whites. 

Edgar  G.  Murphy,  an  intelligent  exponent  of  Southern  senti 
ment,  writes :  "The  North  may  punish  the  white  man,  but  the 
retort  of  the  white  man  falls  too  often  upon  the  Negro.  The 
Negro  is  upon  the  line  of  the  crossfire  between  the  sections. 
The  Federal  Government  may  be  solicitous  as  to  his  vote,  but 
the  Negro  needs  the  daily  and  neighborly  solicitude  of  those 
who  offer  opportunities  of  labor,  possibilities  of  bread.  The 
North,  especially  the  Negro  of  the  North,  may  wish  to  strike 
at  the  South,  but  the  Southern  Negro,  knowing  that  he  must 
live  with  the  Southern  white  man,  rightfully  feels  no  cowardice 
in  the  confession  that  a  privilege  accorded  voluntarily  by  the 
South  is  worth  more  than  any  conceivable  privilege  that  might 
be  imposed  externally  by  the  North.  The  latter  is  but  a  tern- 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  243 

porary  and  exotic  bauble.  The  former  is  a  fact  to  rest  in. 
What  it  is,  it  is.  Because  its  basis  lies  rooted  in  the  common 
consent  of  the  whole  people  it  is  a  social  and  political  real 
ity."  And  further,  "The  white  voter  who  under  our  own  laws 
remains  unqualified,  should  be  excluded  in  his  own  interest 
and  in  the  interest  of  the  State.  The  qualified  Negro — quali 
fied  by  our  own  tests  and  under  our  own  laws — should  be 
fairly  registered  without  evasion  or  postponent  *  *  *  I  pro 
foundly  disbelieve  in  any  social  admixture  of  amalgamation 
of  the  races,  but  I  confess  that,  in  a  certain  high  civic  sense, 
I  am  glad  that  I  can  hold  in  honor  the  Negro  man  who,  after 
only  forty  years  of  freedom,  is  able  fairly  to  stand  upon  his 
feet  before  the  white  man's  law  and  take  the  white  man's 
test.  The  registration  of  such  a  man  is  a  security  rather 
than  a  peril  to  every  sound  and  legitimate  interest  of  the 
State.  That  the  South  recognizes  his  presence  and  accepts 
the  credentials  which  he  offers  is  evident  from  the  fact  that 
tens  of  thousands  of  such  men  have  been  accepted  as  regis 
tered  voters  under  our  amended  Constitutions." 

It  is  one  of  the  large  truths  of  history  that  the  superior 
race  will  always  dominate.  The  English  do  in  Africa  and 
India.  In  our  own  experience,  the  American  dominates  the 
Indian  and  the  Chinese.  Would  we  be  ready  to  condemn  the 
native-born  population  of  Massachusetts  for  refusing  to  sub 
mit  to  domination  by  her  foreign-born  illiterates,  or  Califor 
nia  for  disfranchising  the  45,754  Chinese  within  her  borders? 
If  not,  can  we  in  justice  criticize  the  South  for  refusing  to 
submit  to  Negro  domination?  Wherever  the  intermingling  of 
the  races  is  frowned  down  assimilation  cannot  take  place. 
Consequently  one  race  must  be  supreme;  and  the  inferior  can 
never  hope  to  occupy  a  plane  of  social  and  political  equality 
with  its  superior. 


MIGRATION 

NEGRO  MIGRATION  DURING  THE  WAR  * 

Within  the  brief  period  of  three  years  following  the  outbreak 
of  the  great  war  in  Europe,  more  than  four  hundred  thousand 
Negroes  suddenly  moved  North.  In  extent  this  movement  is 
without  parallel  in  American  history,  for  it  swept  on  thousands 
of  the  blacks  from  remote  regions  of  the  South,  depopulated 
entire  communities,  drew  upon  the  Negro  inhabitants  of  practi 
cally  every  city  of  the  South,  and  spread  from  Florida  to  the 
western  limits  of  Texas.  In  character  it  was  not  without  prece 
dent.  In  fact,  it  bears  such  a  significant  resemblance  to  the 
migration  to  Kansas  in  1879  and  the  one  to  Arkansas  and  Texas 
in  1888  and  1889  that  this  of  1916-1917  may  be  regarded  as 
the  same  movement  with  intervals  of  a  number  of  years. 

Strange  as  it  might  seem  the  migration  of  1879  first  at 
tracted  general  notice  when  the  accusation  was  brought  that 
it  was  a  political  scheme  to  transplant  thousands  of  Negro 
voters  from  their  disfranchisement  in  the  South  to  States 
where  their  votes  might  swell  the  Republican  majority.  Just 
here  may  be  found  a  striking  analogy  to  one  of  the  current 
charges  brought  against  the  movement  nearly  forty  years  later. 
The  congressional  inquiry  which  is  responsible  for  the  discovery 
of  the  fundamental  causes  of  the  movement  was  occasioned 
by  this  charge  and  succeeded  in  proving  its  baselessness. 

The  real  causes  of  the  migration  of  1879  were  not  far  to 
seek.  The  economic  cause  was  the  agricultural  depression  in 
the  lower  Mississippi  Valley.  But  by  far  the  most  potent  fac 
tor  in  effecting  the  movement  was  the  treatment  received  by 
Negroes  at  the  hands  of  the  South.  More  specifically,  as  ex 
pressed  by  the  leaders  of  the  movement  and  refugees  them 
selves,  they  were  a  long  series  of  oppression,  injustice  and 
violence  extending  over  a  period  of  fifteen  years;  the  convict 
system  by  which  the  courts  are  permitted  to  inflict  heavy 

1  From  monograph  by  Emmett  J.  Scott,  Howard  University,  p.  3-?- 
Carnegie  Endowment  for  International  Peace,  Preliminary  Economic 
Studies  of  the  War,  No.  16.  Washington,  D.  C.  1920. 


246  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

fines  for  trival  offenses  and  the  sheriff  to  hire  the  convicts  to 
planters  on  the  basis  of  peonage;  denial  of  political  rights;  long 
continued  persecution  for  political  reasons ;  a  system  of  cheat 
ing  by  landlords  and  storekeepers  which  rendered  it  impossible 
for  tenants  to  make  a  living,  and  the  inadequacy  of  school 
facilities.  Sworn  public  documents  show  that  nearly  3,500 
persons,  most  of  whom  were  Negroes,  were  killed  between 
1866  and  1879,  and  their  murderers  were  never  brought  to 
trial  or  even  arrested.  Several  massacres  of  Negroes  occurred 
in  the  parishes  of  Louisiana.  Henry  Adams,  traveling  through 
out  the  State  and  taking  note  of  crimes  committed  against 
Negroes,  said  that  683  colored  men  were  whipped,  maimed  or 
murdered  within  eleven  years. 

In  the  year  1879,  therefore,  thousands  of  Negroes  from 
Mississippi,  Louisiana,  Texas,  Alabama,  Tennessee  and  North 
Carolina  moved  to  Kansas.  Henry  Adams  of  Shreveport, 
Louisiana,  an  uneducated  Negro  but  a  man  of  extraordinary 
talent,  organized  that  year  a  colonization  council.  He  had 
been  a  soldier  in  the  United  States  Army  until  1869  when 
he  returned  to  his  home  in  Louisiana  and  found  the  con 
dition  of  Negroes  intolerable.  Together  with  a  number  of 
other  Negroes  he  first  formed  a  committee  which  in  his  own 
words  was  intended  to  "look  into  affairs  and  see  the  true 
condition  of  our  race,  to  see  whether  it  was  possible  we 
could  stay  under  a  people  who  held  us  in  bondage  or  not." 
This  committee  grew  to  the  enormous  size  of  five  hundred 
members.  One  hundred  fifty  of  these  members  were 
scattered  throughout  the  South  to  live  and  work  among  the 
Negroes  and  report  their  observations.  These  agents 
quickly  reached  the  conclusion  that  the  treatment  the  Negroes 
received  was  generally  unbearable.  Some  of  the  conditions  re 
ported  were  that  land  rent  was  still  high;  that  in  the  part 
of  the  country  where  the  committee  was  organized  the 
people  were  still  being  whipped,  some  of  them  by  their 
former  owners;  that  they  were  cheated  out  of  their  crops  and 
that  in  some  parts  of  the  country  where  they  voted  they  were 
being  shot. 

It  was  decided  about  1877  that  all  hope  and  confidence 
that  conditions  could  be  changed  should  be  abandoned.  Mem 
bers  of  this  committee  felt  that  they  could  no  longer  re 
main  in  the  South,  and  decided  to  leave  even  if  they  "had 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  247 

to  run  away  and  go  into  the  woods."  Membership  in  the 
council  was  solicited  with  the  result  that  by  1878  there  were 
ninety-eight  thousand  persons  from  Louisiana,  Mississippi, 
Alabama  and  Texas  belonging  to  the  colonization  council  and 
ready  to  move. 

About  the  same  time  there  was  another  conspicuous 
figure  working  in  Tennessee — Benjamin  or  "Pap"  Singleton, 
who  styled  himself  the  father  of  the  exodus.  He  began  the 
work  of  inducing  Negroes  to  move  to  the  State  of  Kansas 
about  1869,  founded  two  colonies  and  carried  a  total  of 
7,432  blacks  from  Tennessee.  During  this  time  he  paid  from 
his  own  pocket  over  $600  for  circulars  which  he  distributed 
throughout  the  Southern  States.  "The  advantages  of  living  in 
a  free  State"  were  the  inducements  offered. 

The  movement  spread  as  far  east  as  North  Carolina. 
There  a  similar  movement  was  started  in  1872  when  there  were 
distributed  a  number  of  circulars  from  Nebraska  telling  of  the 
United  States  government  and  railroad  lands  which  could  be 
cheaply  obtained.  This  brief  excitement  subsided,  but  was  re 
vived  again  by  reports  of  thousands  of  Negroes  leaving  the 
other  States  of  the  South  for  Kansas.  Several  hundred  of 
these  migrants  from  North  Carolina  were  persuaded  en  route  to 
change  their  course  and  go  to  Indiana. 

Much  excitement  characterized  the  movement.  One  des 
cription  of  this  exodus  says : 

Homeless,  penniless  and  in  rags,  these  poor  people  were 
thronging  the  wharves  of  St.  Louis,  crowding  the  steamers 
on  the  Mississippi  River,  hailing  the  passing  steamers  and  im 
ploring  them  for  a  passage  to  the  land  of  freedom,  where 
the  rights  of  citizens  are  respected  and  honest  toil  rewarded 
by  honest  compensation.  The  newspapers  were  filled  with  ac 
counts  of  their  destitution,  and  the  very  air  was  burdened 
with  the  cry  of  distress  from  a  class  of  American  citizens 
flying  from  persecution  which  they  could  no  longer  endure. 
Their  piteous  tales  of  outrage,  suffering  and  wrong  touched 
the  hearts  of  the  more  fortunate  members  of  their  race  in  the 
North  and  West,  and  aid  societies,  designed  to  afford  tem 
porary  relief  and  composed  almost  wholly  of  colored  people, 
were  organized  in  Washington,  St.  Louis,  Topeka  and 
various  other  places. 

Men    still    living,    who    participated    in    this    movement,    tell 


248  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

of  the  long  straggling  procession  of  migrants,  stretching  to  the 
length,  at  times,  of  from  three  to  five  miles,  crossing  States 
on  foot.  Churches  were  opened  all  along  the  route  to  receive 
them.  Songs  were  composed,  some  of  which  still  linger  in  the 
memory,  of  survivors.  The  hardships  under  which  they 
made  this  journey  iare  pathetic.  Yet  it  is  estimated  that 
nearly  25,000  Negroes  left  their  homes  for  Kansas. 

The  exodus  during  the  World  War,  like  both  of  these, 
was  fundamentally  economic,  though  its  roots  were  entangled  in 
the  entire  social  system  of  the  South.  It  was  hailed  as  the 
"Exodus  to  the  Promised  Land"  and  characterized  by  the 
same  frenzy  and  excitement.  Unlike  the  Kansas  movement, 
it  had  no  conspicuous  leaders  of  the  type  of  the  renowned 
"Pap"  Singleton  and  Henry  Adams.  Apparently  they  were  not 
needed.  The  great  horde  of  restless  migrants  swung  loose 
from  their  acknowledged  leaders.  The  very  pervasiveness  of 
the  impulse  to  move  at  the  first  definite  call  of  the  North  was 
sufficient  to  stir  up  and  carry  away  thousands  before  the  ex 
citement  subsided. 

Despite  the  apparent  suddenness  of  this  movement,  all  evi 
dence  indicates  that  it  is  but  the  accentuation  of  a  process 
which  has  been  going  on  for  more  than  fifty  years.  So 
silently  indeed  has  this  shifting  of  the  Negro  population  taken 
place  that  it  has  quite  escaped  popular  attention.  Follow 
ing  the  decennial  revelation  of  the  census  there  is  a  momen 
tary  outburst  of  dismay  and  apprehension  at  the  manifest  trend 
in  the  interstate  migration  of  Negroes.  Inquiries  into  the 
living  standards  of  selected  groups  of  Negroes  in  large  cities 
antedating  the  migration  of  1916-1917  have  revealed  from  year 
to  year  an  increasing  number  of  persons  of  southern  birth 
whose  length  of  residence  has  been  surprisingly  short.  The 
rapid  increase  in  the  Negro  population  of  the  cities  of  the 
North  bears  eloquent  testimony  to  this  tendency.  The  total 
increase  in  the  Negro  population  between  1900  and  1910  was 
1 1. 2  per  cent.  In  the  past  fifty  years  the  northern  move 
ment  has  transferred  about  4  per  cent  of  the  entire  Negro 
population ;  and  the  movement  has  taken  place  in  spite  of  the 
Negro's  economic  handicap  in  the  North.  Within  the  same 
period  Chicago  increased  her  Negro  population  46.3  per  cent 
and  Columbus,  Ohio,  55.3  per  cent.  This  increase  was 
wholly  at  the  expense  of  the  South,  for  the  rural  com- 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  249 

munities  of  the  North  are  very  sparsely  populated  with  Negroes 
and  the  increment  accruing  from  surplus  birth  over  deaths  is 
almost  negligible. 

When  any  attempt  is  made  to  estimate  the  volume  of  this 
most  recent  movement,  however,  there  is  introduced  a  con 
fusing  element,  for  it  can  not  definitely  be  separated  from 
a  process  which  has  been  in  operation  since  emancipation. 
Another  difficulty  in  obtaining  reliable  estimates  is  the  dis 
tribution  of  the  colored  population  over  the  rural  districts. 
It  is  next  to  impossible  to  estimate  the  numbers  leaving  the 
South  even  on  the  basis  of  the  numbers  leaving  the  cities. 
The  cities  are  merely  concentration  points  and  they  are  con 
tinually  recruiting  from  the  surrounding  rural  districts. 

The  census  of  1910  brought  out  the  fact  that  there  had 
been  considerable  migration  from  the  North  to  the  South,  as 
well  as  from  the  South  to  the  North,  and  from  the  East  to 
the  West.  The  number  of  persons  born  in  the  North  and 
living  in  the  South  (1,449,229)  was  not  very  different  from  the 
number  born  in  the  South  and  living  in  the  North  (1,527,107). 
The  North,  however,  has  contributed  more  than  five  times 
as  many  to  the  population  of  the  West  as  the  South  has. 
The  number  of  Negroes  born  in  the  South  and  living  in 
the  North  in  1910  was  415,533,  or  a  little  over  two-thirds  of 
the  total  number  living  in  the  North.  Of  the  9,109,153 
Negroes  born  in  the  South  440,534,  or  4.8  per  cent,  were,  in 
1910,  living  outside  the  South.  The  migration  southward  it  will 
be  noted,  has  been  in  recent  years  largely  into  the  west  south 
central  division,  while  the  migration  northward  has  been  more 
evenly  distributed  by  divisions,  except  that  a  comparatively 
small  number  from  the  South  have  gone  into  the  New  England 
States. 

The  greater  mobility  of  whites  than  of  Negroes  is  shown  by 
the  fact  that  in  1910,  15  per  cent  of  the  whites  and  10  per  cent 
of  the  Negroes  lived  outside  of  the  States  in  which  they  were 
born.  This  greater  mobility  of  the  whites  as  compared  with  the 
Negroes  was  due  in  a  large  measure  to  the  lack  of  opportunities 
for  large  numbers  of  Negroes  to  find  employment  in  the  sec 
tions  outside  the  South.  The  World  War  changed  these  con 
ditions  and  gave  to  the  Negroes  of  the  United  States  the 
same  opportunities  for  occupations  in  practically  every  section 
of  the  country,  which  had  heretofore  been  enjoyed  only  by  the 


250  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

whites.  In  1900,  27,000  Negroes  born  in  the  North  lived  in  the 
South.  In  1910,  41,000  Negroes  born  in  the  North  lived  in  the 
South.  This  indicated  that  there  was  beginning  to  be  a  con 
siderable  movement  of  Negroes  from  the  North  to  the  South 
because  of  the  greater  opportunities  in  the  South  to  find  em 
ployment  in  teaching,  medicine  and  business.  The  migration 
conditions  brought  about  by  the  war  have  probably  changed  this 
to  some  extent.  Previous  to  the  World  War,  the  States  having 
the  greatest  gain  from  Negro  migration  were  Arkansas,  105,500, 
Pennsylvania,  85,000,  Oklahoma,  85,000,  Florida,  84,000,  New 
York,  58,450  and  Illinois,  57,500. 


EFFORTS  TO  CHECK  THE  MOVEMENT  * 

The  departure  of  the  first  Negroes  usually  elicited  no  con 
cern  from  the  authorities.  It  was  assumed  that  their  actions 
were  merely  expressions  of  the  Negro's  "love  for  travel,"  and 
that  they  would  soon  return.  When,  however,  they  did  not 
return  and  hosts  of  others  followed,  the  white  South  became 
deeply  concerned  and  endeavored  to  check  the  movement. 
Throughout  the  exodus  drastic  legislation  and  force  were  em 
ployed.  In  Alabama,  Arkansas,  Mississippi  and  Georgia  laws 
were  passed  in  an  effort  to  suppress  the  activities  of  labor 
agents.  Licenses  were  made  prohibitively  high ;  labor  agents 
were  arrested  and  heavily  fined.  In  some  cases  their  coming 
was  penalized  to  prohibit  their  operations  entirely  and  they 
frequently  suffered  physical  injury. 

In  Florida  labor  recruiting  early  assumed  a  serious  aspect. 
Precaution  was,  therefore,  taken  to  impede  the  progress  of 
the  work  of  labor  agents  among  Negroes,  at  first  by  moral 
suasion  and  then  by  actual  force.  The  cities  and  towns  of 
this  State  enacted  measures  requiring  a  very  high  license  of 
labor  agents,  imposing  in  case  of  failure  to  comply  with  these 
regulations,  a  penalty  of  imprisonment. 

In  Jacksonville,  where  the  labor  agents  flourished,  the  City 
Council  passed  an  ordinance  requiring  that  migration  agents 
should  pay  $1,000  license  to  recruit  labor  sent  out  of  the  State 
under  penalty  of  $600  fine  and  60  days  in  jail.  Several  police 

1  From  Negro  Migration  During  the  War,  by  Emmett  J.  Scott,  Howard 
University,  p.  72-85.  Carnegie  Endowment  for  International  Peace,  Pre 
liminary  Economic  Studies  of  the  War,  No.  16.  Washington,  D.C.  1920. 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  251 

detectives  were  assigned  the  task  of  arresting  those  who  were 
said  to  be  spreading  false  reports  among  Negroes  there  to  the 
effect  that  special  trains  were  ready  on  various  specified  dates 
to  take  them  to  points  in  the  North. 

The  same  condition  with  respect  to  the  apparent  necessity 
for  prohibitive  measures  obtained  in  Georgia.  The  local  gov 
ernments  early  took  action  to  prevent  the  drain  of  the  labor 
population  to  northern  States  through  the  operation  of  labor 
Agents.  It  was  soon  observed,  however,  that  these  agents 
worked  out  their  schemes  so  clandestinely  that  it  was  impossible 
to  check  the  movement  by  such  measures.  Fearing  that  the 
general  unrest  among  the  Negroes  of  the  city  and  the  efforts 
that  were  being  put  forth  on  the  part  of  the  authorities  to  keep 
them  from  being  transported  from  Macon  to  the  North,  might 
result  in  a  riot  with  which  the  city  authorities  would  not  be 
able  to  cope,  Chief  of  Police  George  S.  Riley  recommended  to 
the  civil  service  commission  that  forty  magazine  rifles  be  pur 
chased  for  the  police  department.  At  that  time  the  police  had 
only  their  pistols  and  clubs.  It  was  said  that  surliness  then 
existed  among  certain  Negroes  and  the  police  wanted  to  be 
able  to  cope  with  any  situation  that  might  arise.  The  City 
Council,  thereafter,  raised  the  license  fee  for  labor  agents  to 
$25,000,  requiring  also  that  such  an  agent  be  recommended  by 
ten  local  ministers,  ten  manufacturers  and  twenty-five  business 
men.  The  police  of  Macon  were  very  active  in  running  down 
labor  agents  violating  this  law. 

Americus  was  honeycombed  and  carefully  watched  and 
searched  for  persons  inducing  Negroes  to  migrate,  as  there 
was  a  large  exodus  of  Negroes  from  this  city  to  the  tobacco 
fields  of  Connecticut.  Negroes  attempting  to  leave  were  ar 
rested  and  held  to  see  if  by  legal  measures  they  could  be 
deterred  from  going  North.  The  officers  in  charge  of  this  raid 
were  armed  with  State  warrants  charging  misdemeanors  and 
assisted  by  a  formidable  array  of  policemen  and  deputy  sheriffs. 
Negroes  were  roughly  taken  from  the  trains  and  crowded  into 
the  prisons  to  await  trial  for  these  so-called  misdemeanors. 
Although  the  majority  of  them  were  set  free  after  their  trains 
had  left  the  city,  the  leaders  in  most  cases  suffered  humiliation 
at  the  hands  of  the  officers  of  the  law. 

Alabama  was  equally  alive  to  the  need  to  suppress  the  migra 
tion  propaganda  among  Negroes.  To  this  end  the  Montgomery 


252  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

City  Commission  on  September  19,  1916,  passed  an  ordinance  to 
the  effect  that  any  person  who  would  entice,  persuade  or  in 
fluence  any  laborer  or  other  person  to  leave  the  city  of  Mont 
gomery  for  the  purpose  of  being  employed  at  any  other  place 
as  a  laborer  must  on  conviction  be  fined  not  less  than  one  nor 
more  than  one  hundred  dollars,  or  may  be  sentenced  to  hard 
labor  for  the  city,  for  not  more  than  six  months,  one  or  both 
in  the  discretion  of  the  court.  The  other  ordinance  provided 
that  any  person,  firm  or  corporation  who  published,  printed  or 
wrote  or  delivered  or  distributed  or  posted  or  caused  to  be  pub 
lished,  printed  or  written  or  delivered  or  distributed  or  posted, 
any  advertisement,  letter,  newspaper,  pamphlet,  handbill  or  other 
writing,  for  the  purpose  of  enticing,  persuading  or  influencing 
any  laborer  or  other  person  to  leave  the  city  of  Montgomery  for 
the  purpose  of  being  employed  at  any  other  place  as  a  laborer 
must  on  conviction  be  fined  not  less  than  one  hundred  dollars, 
or  may  be  sentenced  to  hard  labor  for  the  city  for  not  more 
than  six  months,  one  or  both  in  the  discretion  of  the  court. 
Labor  agents  and  other  leaders  both  white  and  black  were  ar 
rested  throughout  the  State  in  accordance  with  the  usual  cus 
tom  of  preferring  technical  charges. 

The  treatment  of  the  movement  in  Mississippi  was  no  ex 
ception  to  the  rule.  At  Jackson,  the  "pass  riders,"  as  they  were 
called,  were  so  molested  by  the  police  that  they  were  finally 
driven  from  the  town.  In  the  same  town  the  citizens  were  re 
ported  to  have  forced  the  railroads  to  discontinue  the  use  of 
passes  on  the  threat  of  damaging  their  interests  and  influencing 
decisions  in  court  cases.  Negroes  were  secretly  enticed  away, 
however,  after  they  had  been  dispersed  from  the  railway  sta 
tions  and  imprisoned  when  in  the  act  of  boarding  the  trains. 
The  police  interfered  at  one  time  with  Negroes  leaving,  espe 
cially  when  it  was  suspected  that  they  were  leaving  on  passes 
To  circumvent  this,  Negroes  would  go  two  or  three  stations  be 
low  Jackson  where  there  were  no  policemen  and  board  the 
trains. 

The  alarm  felt  over  the  exodus  prompted  the  mayor  of 
New  Orleans  to  telegraph  the  president  of  the  Illinois  Central 
Railroad,  asking  that  this  road  stop  carrying  Negroes  to  the 
North.  The  latter  replied  that  he  had  viewed  with  much  con 
cern  the  heavy  exodus  ©f  Negro  labor  from  the  South  during 
the  past  year,  and,  because  of  his  very  important  interest  in 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  253 

that  section,  it  was  not  to  his  advantage  to  encourage  it,  but 
as  common  carriers,  they  could  not  refuse  to  sell  tickets  or  to 
provide  the  necessary  transportation.  It  seemed  to  him  that 
as  long  as  their  friends  and  kinsmen  who  had  preceded  them  to 
the  North  and  East  were  receiving  a  high  scale  of  wages,  the 
South  would  have  to  look  for  continued  movement. 

After  having  enforced  these  drastic  measures  without  secur 
ing  satisfactory  results,  and  having  seen  that  any  attempt  to 
hold  the  Negroes  by  force  resulted  apparently  in  an  increased 
determination  to  leave,  there  was  resort  to  the  policy  of  frighten 
ing  the  Negroes  away  from  the  North  by  circulating  rumors 
as  to  the  misfortunes  to  be  experienced  there.  Negroes  were 
then  warned  against  the  rigors  of  the  northern  winter  and  the 
death  rate  from  pneumonia  and  tuberculosis. 

When  such  efforts  as  these  failed,  however,  the  disconcerted 
planters  and  business  men  of  the  South  resorted  to  another 
plan.  Reconciliation  and  persuasion  were  tried.  Meetings  were 
held  and  speakers  were  secured  and  advised  what  to  say.  In 
cities  and  communities  where  contact  on  this  plane  had  been 
infrequent,  it  was  a  bit  difficult  to  approach  the  subject.  The 
press  of  Georgia  gave  much  space  to  the  discussion  of  the 
movement  and  what  ought  to  be  done  to  stop  it.  The  consen 
sus  of  opinion  of  the  white  papers  in  the  State  was  that  the 
Negro  had  not  been  fairly  treated,  and  that  better  treatment 
would  be  one  of  the  most  effective  means  of  checking  the  mi 
gration.  Mob  violence,  it  was  pointed  out,  was  one  of  the 
chief  causes  of  the  exodus. 

It  was  found  necessary  to  increase  wages  from  10  to 
25  per  cent  and  in  some  cases  as  much  as  100  per  cent 
to  hold  labor.  The  reasons  for  migration  given  by  Negroes 
were  sought.  In  almost  all  cases  the  chief  complaint  was  about 
treatment.  An  effort  was  made  to  meet  this  by  calling  con 
ferences  and  by  giving  publicity  to  the  launching  of  a  cam 
paign  to  make  unfair  settlements  and  other  such  grievances  un 
popular.  Thus,  in  Bolivar  county,  Mississippi,  a  meeting  was 
called,  ostensibly  to  look  after  the  economic  welfare  of  the 
Delta  country,  but  in  reality  to  develop  some  plan  for  holding 
labor.  A  subcommittee  of  seventeen  men  was  appointed  to  look 
into  the  labor  situation.  There  were  twelve  white  men  and  five 
Negroes.  The  subcommittee  met  and  reported  to  the  body  that 
the  present  labor  shortage  was  due  to  the  migration,  and  that 


254  SELECTED  ARTICLES 

the  migration  was  due  to  a  feeling  of  insecurity  before  the  law, 
the  unrestrained  action  of  mobs,  unfair  methods  of  yearly 
settlement  on  farms  and  inadequate  school  facilities.  As  a  re 
sult  of  the  report,  it  was  agreed  to  make  an  appropriation  of 
$25,000  toward  an  agricultural  high  school,  as  a  step  toward 
showing  an  interest  in  the  Negroes  of  Bolivar  county  and  thus 
give  them  reasons  for  remaining.  A  campaign  was  started  to 
make  unpopular  the  practice  among  farmers  of  robbing  Negroes 
of  the  returns  from  their  labor,  and  a  general  effort  was  made 
by  a  few  of  the  leading  men  behind  the  movement  to  create  "a 
better  feeling"  between  the  races. 

Wide  publicity  was  given  to  the  experiment  in  plantation 
government,  and  the  policy  was  accepted  by  a  number  of 
planters  as  opportunistic  action.  Thus,  one  Mr.  Abbott  of 
Natchez,  Mississippi,  told  the  planters  of  his  section  that  good 
treatment,  adequate  and  sympathetic  oversight  are  the  import 
ant  factors  in  any  effort  to  hold  labor.  He  made  a  trip  to  his 
farm  every  week,  endeavoring  to  educate  his  tenants  in  modes 
of  right  living.  Every  man  on  his  place  had  a  bank  account 
and  was  apparently  satisfied.  This  example  was  presented 
with  the  statement  that  where  these  methods  had  been  used, 
few  had  left.  One  planter  purchased  twenty-eight  Ford  auto 
mobiles  to  sell  on  easy  terms  to  his  tenants  with  the  hope  of 
contenting  them. 

When  migrants  could  be  induced  to  talk  freely,  they  com 
plained  also  against  the  treatment  in  the  courts.  Some  of  the 
cities  consequently  are  known  to  have  suspended  their  raids 
and  arrests  on  petty  charges.  In  some  instances  the  attempts 
at  pacification  reached  almost  incredible  bounds.  For  example, 
a  Negro  missed  connection  with  his  train  through  the  fault 
of  the  railroad.  His  white  friend  advised  him  to  bring  suit. 
This  he  did  and  urged  as  his  principal  grievance  that  he  was 
stranded  in  a  strange  town  and  was  forced  to  sleep  in  quar 
ters  wholly  at  the  mercy  of  bed  bugs.  It  is  said  that  he  was 
awarded  damages  to  the  extent  of  $800.  A  Jackson,  Missis 
sippi,  daily  paper  that  had  been  running  a  column  of  humor 
ous  incidents  about  Negroes  taken  from  the  daily  court  ses 
sions,  which  was  very  distasteful  to  the  colored  people  of  the 
city,  discontinued  it.  Such  methods  as  these  have  been  the 
only  ones  to  prove  effective  in  bringing  about  an  appreciable 
stem  in  the  tide. 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  255 


EFFECTS  OF  THE  MOVEMENT  ON  THE  SOUTH1 

The  first  changes  wrought  by  this  migration  were  unusual 
ly   startling.      Homes    found   themselves   without   servants,    fac 
tories  could  not  operate  because  of  the  lack  of  labor,   farmers 
were  unable  to  secure  laborers  to  harvest  their  crops.     Streets 
•  in   towns   and    cities    once     crowded    assumed    the    aspect    of 
'deserted  thoroughfares,  houses    in    congested    districts    became 
empty,  churches,  lodges  and  societies  suffered  such  a  large  loss 
iof   membership  that  they  had  to  close  up  or  undergo  reorgan 
ization.      Probably   the   most   striking   change   was   the   unusual 
increase  in  wages. 

Throughout  the  South  there  was  not  only  a  change  in  pol 
icy  as  to  the  method  of  stopping  the  migration  of  the  blacks 
to  the  North,  but  a  change  in  the  economic  policy  of  the  South. 
Southern  business  men  and  planters  soon  found  out  that  it  was 
impossible  to  treat  the  Negro  as  a  serf  and  began  to  deal  with 
him  as  an  actual  employee  entitled  to  his  share  of  the  returns 
from  his  labor.  It  was  evident  that  it  would  be  very  much 
better  to  have  the  Negroes  as  co-workers  in  a  common  cause 
than  to  have  them  abandon  their  occupations  in  the  South, 
leaving  their  employers  no  opportunity  to  secure  to  themselves 
adequate  income  to  keep  them  above  want. 

A  more  difficult  change  of  attitude  was  that  of  the  labor 
unions.  They  had  for  years  been  antagonistic  to  the  Negroes 
and  had  begun  to  drive  them  from  many  of  the  higher  pur 
suits  of  labor  which  they  had  even  from  the  days  of  slavery 
monopolized.  The  skilled  Negro  laborer  has  gradually  seen 
his  chances  grow  less  and  less  as  the  labor  organizations  have 
invaded  the  South.  In  the  end,  however,  the  trade  unions 
have  been  compelled  to  yield,  although  complete  economic  free 
dom  of  the  Negro  in  the  South  is  still  a  matter  of  prospect. 

There  was,  too,  a  decided  change  in  the  attitude  of  the 
whole  race  toward  the  blacks.  The  white  people  could  be 
more  easily  reached,  and  very  soon  there  was  brought  about  a 
better  understanding  between  the  races.  Cities  gave  attention 
to  the  improvement  of  the  sanitary  condition  of  the  Negro 
sections,  which  had  so  long  been  neglected;  Negroes  were 

'From  Negro  Migration  During  the  War    by  Emmett  J.  Scott    Howard 
University,   p.    86-94-    Carnegie    Endowment    for    International    Peace     I 
liminary   Economic    Studies   of  the   War,    No.    16.  Washington,   D.C.,    1920. 


256  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

invited  to  take  part  in  the  clean-up  week;  the  Women's  Health 
League  called  special  meetings  of  colored  women,  conferred 
with  them  and  urged  them  to  organize  community  clubs.  Com 
mittees  of  leading  Negroes  dared  to  take  up  with  their  em 
ployers  the  questions  of  better  accommodations  and  better 
treatment  of  Negro  labor.  Members  of  these  committees  went 
before  chambers  of  commerce  to  set  forth  their  claims.  Others 
dared  boldly  to  explain  to  them  that  the  Negroes  were  leav 
ing  the  South  because  they  had  not  been  given  the  treatment 
which  should  be  accorded  men. 

Instead  of  expressing  their  indignation  at  such  efforts  on 
the  part  of  the  Negroes,  the  whites  listened  to  them  attentively. 
Accordingly,  joint  meetings  of  the  whites  and  blacks  were 
held  to  hear  frank  statements  of  the  case  from  speakers  of 
both  races.  One  of  the  most  interesting  of  these  meetings 
was  the  one  held  in  Birmingham,  Alabama.  The  Negroes  ad 
dressing  the  audience  frankly  declared  that  it  was  impossible 
to  bring  back  from  the  North  the  migrants  who  were  making 
good  there,  but  that  the  immediate  problem  requiring  solution 
was  how  to  hold  in  the  South  those  who  had  not  gone.  These 
Negroes  made  it  clear  that  it  was  impossible  for  Negro  lead 
ers  through  the  pulpit  and  press  to  check  the  movement,  but 
that  only  through  a  change  in  the  attitude  of  the  whites  to 
the  blacks  could  the  latter  be  made  to  feel  that  the  Southland 
is  safe  for  them. 

Here  we  see  the  coming  to  pass  of  a  thing  long  desired  by 
those  interested  in  the  welfare  of  the  South  and  long  rejected 
by  those  who  have  always  prized  the  peculiar  interest  of  one 
race  more  highly  than  the  welfare  of  all.  White  men,  for  the 
first  time,  were  talking  on  the  streets  with  Negroes  just  as 
white  men  talk  with  each  other.  The  merchants  gave  their 
Negro  patrons  more  attention  and  consideration.  A  prominent 
white  man  said,  "I  have  never  seen  such  changes  as  have 
come  about  within  the  last  four  months.  I  know  of  white 
men  and  Negroes  who  have  not  dared  to  speak  to  one  another 
on  the  streets  to  converse  freely."  The  suspension  of  harsh 
treatment  was  so  marked  in  some  places  that  few  Negroes 
neglected  to  mention  it. 

Conferences  of  Negroes  and  whites  in  Mississippi  em 
phasized  the  necessity  of  cooperation  between  the  races  for 
their  common  good.  A  general  review  of  the  results  made  it 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  257 

clear  that  there  was  a  disposition  on  the  part  of  the  white 
population  to  give  some  measure  of  those  benefits,  the  denial 
of  which  was  alleged  as  the  cause  of  the  exodus.  For  those 
who  remained  conditions  were  much  more  tolerable,  although 
there  appeared  to  persist  a  feeling  of  apprehension  that  these 
concessions  would  be  retracted  as  soon  as  normal  times  re 
turned.  Some  were  of  the  opinion  that  the  exodus  was  of 
more  assistance  to  those  Negroes  who  stayed  behind  than  to 
those  who  went  away. 

Another  evidence  of  the  beneficent  effects  of  the  decrease 
in  the  population  in  the  Black  Belt  of  the  South  is  the  interest 
now  almost  generally  manifested  in  the  improvement  of  the 
Negro  quarters  in  southern  cities.  For  a  number  of  years  sci 
ence  has  made  an  appeal  in  behalf  of  the  thoroughly  clean 
city,  knowing  that  since  the  germ  does  not  draw  the  color 
line,  a  city  can  not  be  kept  clean  as  long  as  a  substantial  por 
tion  of  its  citizens  are  crowded  into  one  of  its  oldest  and 
least  desirable  parts,  neglected  by  the  city  and  avoided  by  the 
whites.  Doing  now  what  science  has  hitherto  failed  to  accom 
plish,  this  peculiar  economic  need  of  the  Negro  in  the  South 
has  brought  about  unusual  changes  in  the  appearance  of 
southern  cities.  Darkened  portions  of  urban  districts  have 
been  lighted ;  streets  in  need  of  improvement  have  been  paved ; 
the  water,  light  and  gas  systems  have  been  extended  to  Negro 
quarters  and  play  grounds  and  parks  have  been  provided  for 
their  amusement. 

No  less  important  has  been  the  effect  of  the  migration  on 
the  southern  land  tenure  and  the  credit  system,  the  very  heart 
of  the  trouble  in  that  section.  For  generations  the  Negroes 
have  borne  it  grievously  that  it  has  been  difficult  to  obtain 
land  for  cultivation  other  than  by  paying  exorbitant  rents  on 
giving  their  landlords  an  unusually  large  share  of  the  crops. 
They  have  been  further  handicapped  by  the  necessity  of  de 
pending  on  such  landlords  to  supply  them  with  food  and  cloth 
ing  at  such  exorbitant  prices  that  their  portion  of  the  return 
from  their  labor  has  been  usually  exhausted  before  harvest 
ing  the  crops.  Cheated  thus  in  the  making  of  their  contracts 
and  in  purchasing  necessities,  they  have  been  but  the  prey  of 
sharks  and  harpies  bent  upon  keeping  them  in  a  state  scarcely 
better  than  that  of  slavery.  Southerners  of  foresight  have, 
therefore,  severely  criticized  this  custom  and,  in  a  measure, 


258  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

have  contributed  to  its  decline.  The  press  and  the  pulpit  of 
the  South  are  now  urging  the  planters  to  abolish  this  system 
that  the  Negroes  may  enjoy  the  fruits  of  their  own  labor.  It 
is  largely  because  of  these  urgent  appeals  in  behalf  of  fair 
play,  during  the  economic  upheaval,  that  this  legalized  rob 
bery  is  losing  its  hold  in  the  South. 

On  the  whole,  the  South  will  profit  by  this  migration.  Such 
an  upheaval  was  necessary  to  set  up  a  reaction  in  the  southern 
mind  to  enable  its  leaders  of  thought  to  look  beyond  them 
selves  into  the  needs  of  the  man  far  down.  There  is  in  prog 
ress,  therefore,  a  reshaping  of  public  opinion,  in  fact  a  peace 
ful  revolution  in  a  land  cursed  by  slavery  and  handicapped  by 
aristocracy.  The  tendency  to  maltreat  the  Negroes  without 
cause,  the  custom  of  arresting  them  for  petty  offenses  and  the 
institution  of  lynching  have  all  been  somewhat  checked  by 
this  change  in  the  attitude  of  the  southern  white  man  toward 
the  Negro.  The  check  in  the  movement  of  the  Negroes  to 
other  parts  may  to  some  extent  interfere  with  this  develop 
ment  of  the  new  public  opinion  in  the  South,  but  this  move 
ment  has  been  so  far  reaching  in  its  effect  as  to  compel  the 
thinking  class  of  the  South  to  construct  and  carry  out  a  pol 
icy  of  fair  play  to  provide  against  that  day  when  that  section 
may  find  itself  again  at  the  mercy  of  the  laboring  class  of  the 
Negroes. 


NEGRO  IN  INDUSTRY 

HIS  INDUSTRIAL  SUCCESS  1 

Too  exclusively  the  Negro  has  been  thought  of  in  the 
terms  of  the  domestic  servant.  In  the  right  light  it  is  an 
honorable  distinction.  At  his  best  the  domestic  has  belonged 
to  the  Order  of  the  Knights  of  the  Christian  Round  Table 
whose  motto  has  been:  "Whosoever  will  be  great  among  you 
let  him  be  your  servant."  He  has  often  shown  the  real  spirit 
and  heart  of  "The  Servant  in  the  House."  This  old-time  re 
lation  of  life  has  gradually  changed  since  the  days  of  Eman 
cipation.  Only  21  per  cent  of  all  Negroes  were  of  this 
class  in  1910.  The  movement  away  from  domestic  service 
has  been  greatly  accelerated  since  the  wartime  demands  in  in 
dustry  came  upon  us.  Even  before  the  Great  War  Negro  la 
borers  were  multiplying  in  lumber  camps,  mines,  iron  mills, 
and  all  forms  of  industry  in  the  Sunny  South.  Increasingly 
also  they  were  coming  North  as  industrial  laborers.  Only  in 
Southern  cotton  mills  did  the  "poor  whites"  reign  supreme. 

The  coming  of  the  war  meant  accelerated  industry  and  a 
new  day  for  Negro  labor.  Negroes  were  needed  in  great 
numbers  in  factories,  mines,  munition  plants,  docks,  stock 
yards,  freight  yards  and  in  many  other  places  not  previously 
entered.  Negro  women  in  greatly  increased  numbers  found 
welcome  also  as  clerks,  factory  hands,  milliners,  wrappers, 
checkers.  Race  was  no  hindrance  when  economic  law  made 
demands.  A  new  day  for  the  colored  worker  had  dawned. 
His  work  was  a  success.  The  Department  of  Negro  Eco 
nomics  of  the  United  States  Government  in  a  careful  study 
found  that  "with  here  and  there  an  exception  the  Negro  work 
ers  in  the  matter  of  turnover,  absenteeism,  wage  scales,  quan 
tity  and  quality  of  the  work  on  which  they  are  employed, 
compared  favorably  with  the  white  workers  in  the  same  plant 
on  the  same  work.  Here  is  substantial  answer  to  the  old 
charge  of  shiftlessness  and  laziness." 

iFrom  The  Negro:  an  Asset  of  the  American  Nation  by  Rodney  W. 
Roundy.  p.  7-8,  u.  Home  Missions  Council,  New  York. 


26o  SELECTED  ARTICLES 

As  a  skilled  workman  he  made  good.  The  United  States  Ship 
ping  Board  had  under  employment  24,647  negroes  when  the  arm 
istice  was  signed.  Of  this  number  4,962  were  skilled  workmen 
and  19,685  were  unskilled.  At  the  conclusion  of  the  war  these 
numbers  were  respectively  reduced  to  3,872  and  10,203.  In 
the  case  of  the  skilled  workers  this  was  a  20.7  per  cent  re 
duction.  Of  the  unskilled  48  per  cent  reduction.  These  facts 
are  altogether  to  the  good  in  testing  the  success  of  the  Negro 
skilled  laborer.  Other  investigations  of  the  Department  of 
Negro  Economics  in  various  industrial  plants  throughout  the 
country  emphasize  the  same  truth.  The  skilled  Negro  has 
very  largely  retained  his  position  in  all  places  where  he  has 
gained  foothold  during  the  last  few  years.  It  is  to  be  remem 
bered  that  Charles  Knight  made  the  record  as  a  riveter  in  the 
war  period,  having  driven  4,875  rivets  in  nine  hours  in  the 
Bethlehem  Steel  Plant  at  Sparrow's  Point,  Md.,  and  that 
Charles  H.  Jackson  is  the  recent  inventor  of  an  armored  div 
ing  suit,  to  be  used  as  a  device  for  marine  salvage  and  per 
mitting  a  descent  of  360  feet  beneath  the  water's  surface. 

There  is  such  a  thing  as  the  thriftless  Negro.  He  is  still 
with  us  in  sufficient  though  decreasing  numbers.  The  real 
Negro  is  the  working  Negro.  When  new  industries  are 
planned  and  new  developments  projected  the  colored  man  is 
included  in  the  reckoning.  He  is  on  the  Railroad  section  as 
well  as  in  the  Pullman  car  and  diner.  We  find  him  in  the 
stockyards  of  Chicago,  the  automobile  industry  of  Detroit,  the 
rubber  works  of  Akron,  the  steel  mills  of  Pittsburgh,  Cleve 
land  and  other  mid-western  cities.  The  Negro  was  the  deter 
mining  factor  in  the  steel  strike  of  1919.  At  last,  all  too 
tardily,  the  American  Federation  of  Labor  has  admitted  him 
to  membership  in  the  union.  His  number  is  multiplying 
among  the  longshoremen  of  Philadelphia,  Baltimore,  and  New 
York.  He  digs  coal  in  the  mines  of  Kentucky,  West  Virginia, 
Indiana,  and  Kansas.  Even  after  the  war  is  over  he  is  among 
the  shipbuilders  of  Portsmouth,  Newark,  Philadelphia,  Balti 
more,  Norfolk  and  Newport  News.  In  the  latter  place  5,500 
skilled  Negro  laborers  work  with  white  men  side  by  side. 
Mr.  Homer  L.  Ferguson,'  native  of  North  Carolina,  "the  most 
human  shipbuilder  in  America,"  sounds  a  real  warning: 
"Don't  you  dare  come  down  from  the  North  to  this  yard  and 
tell  us  that  the  black  man  in  the  South  is  an  industrial  fail- 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  261 

ure — you  who  only  use  him  as  an  elevator  boy  or  a  parlor- 
car  porter  or  a  chauffeur  and  refuse  to  give  him  an  equal  in 
dustrial  opportunity  with  white  labor."  Varied  industries  in 
many  places  have  called  300,000  to  500,000  from  cabins,  farms 
and  plantations  of  the  Southland  for  work  that  must  be  done 
— work  left  undone  unless  the  strong  hands  of  Negroes  do  it. 

Progress  in  Business 

The  Negro's  commercial  progress  has  been  remarkable. 
Increasing  numbers  of  his  race  have  shown  unshakable  evi 
dence  of  that  soundest  principle  of  American  business  success 
— thrift.  In  1866  the  Negroes  of  the  country  North  and 
South  owned  12,000  houses,  operated  20,000  farms,  conducted 
2,100  businesses  and  had  $20,000,000  of  accumulated  wealth. 
iFifty  years  later  the  number  of  homes  owned  had  increased 
to  600,000,  one  out  of  every  four,  the  operated  farms  to  981,000, 
the  number  of  businesses  to  45,000  and  the  accumulated 
wealth  to  $1,110,000,000.  In  1867  four  hundred  Negroes  were 
.engaged  in  about  forty  lines  of  business;  in  1917  they  were 
engaged  in  two  hundred  lines  and  had  $50,000,000  invested. 
Today  there  are  seventy  or  more  safe  and  sound  banks  in  the 
hands  of  capable  Negro  financiers.  Already  members  of  the 
race  have  received  grants  for  a  thousand  patents.  In  1866 
the  valuation  of  property  used  for  higher  education  was 
$60,000;  in  1916  it  was  $21,500,000.  For  the  same  dates  the 
valuation  of  church  property  increased  from  $1,500,000  to 
$76,000,000.  Were  the  figures  for  increase  along  all  lines  for 
the  last  five  years  available  a  much  more  marked  contrast 
would  appear. 


EFFECT  OF  WAR  CONDITIONS  ON  NEGRO 
LABOR 1 

In  speaking  upon  the  "Effect  of  War  Conditions  on  Negro 
Labor"  the  subject  should  be  divided  into  three  main  parts: 
(i)  The  change  in  the  relation  of  Negro  wage-earners  to 
white  employers,  North  and  South;  (2)  the  change  in  the 

1  From  article  by  George  Edmund  Haynes,  Director  of  Negro  Eco 
nomics,  U.S.  Department  of  Labor.  Academy  of  Political  Science.  Pro 
ceedings.  8:299-312.  February,  1919. 


262  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

relation  of  Negro  wage-earners  to  white  wage-earners  and  (3) 
the  change  in  the  Negro  himself. 

To  discuss  first  the  change  in  the  relation  of  the  Negro 
wage-earner  to  white  employers,  the  point  divides  itself  into 
two  parts:  namely,  the  change  in  relation  to  employers  in  the 
North  and  the  change  in  relation  to  employers  in  the  South. 

Preceding  the  war  period,  Northern  employers  in  indus 
tries,  on  railroads  and  in  mines  had  very  little  contact  or  ex 
perience  with  Negro  labor.  With  few  exceptions,  it  might  be 
said  that  Northern  industrial  employers  as  a  whole  had  al 
most  no  relations  with  Negro  labor.  The  experiences,  there 
fore,  of  these  employers  during  the  war  were  largely  experi 
mental  and  with  results  varying  according  to  the  wisdom  of 
their  methods. 

To  deal  with  such  problems  in  the  mobilization  of  Negro 
wage-earners  for  winning  the  war,  the  Department  of  Labor 
formed  Negro  Workers'  Advisory  Committee  in  ten  states. 
These  committees  by  states  and  counties  were  made  up  of  repre 
sentatives  of  Negro  wage-earners,  of  white  employers  and 
wherever  possible,  of  white  wage-earners.  These  committees 
have  served  as  connecting  links  between  employers  and  many 
organizations  such  as  churches,  lodges,  women's  clubs  and 
betterment  agencies  through  which  Negro  workers  are  influ 
enced.  Thus  these  committees  helped  to  bring  employers  and 
white  workers  into  such  touch  with  Negro  workers  that  all 
sides  received  satisfactory  impressions  during  the  first  steps 
of  introducing  Negroes  into  industrial  plants.  In  a  number  of 
cases  in  Ohio,  Illinois,  Michigan  and  New  Jersey  the  facts 
about  the  success  of  employing  Negro  workers  along  several 
lines,  especially  the  employment  of  Negro  women,  have  been 
brought  favorably  to  the  attention  of  employers  who  had  here 
tofore  given  no  consideration  to  the  matter.  These  illustra 
tions  indicate  the  fact  that  these  first  experiences  of  Northern 
employers  with  Negro  labor  were  largely  experimental.  In  a 
number  of  cases  they  frankly  said  they  did  not  desire  to 
have  the  Negro,  but  were  taking  him  under  the  pressure  of 
extreme  war-labor  needs. 

But,  let  me  emphasize  that  wherever  as  in  Detroit,  in  Chi 
cago,  in  Cleveland  and  in  other  places,  there  has  been  intelli 
gent  guidance  so  that  the  first  experience  of  the  employer  has 
been  satisfactory  to  him  and  wherever  there  has  been  intelli- 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  263 

gent  guidance  for  Negro  workers,  the  experiment  has  usually 
been  successful.  Northern  employers  have  testified  that  they 
have  received  a  favorable  impression  of  the  capacity  of  Ne 
groes,  of  their  readiness  to  learn,  and  of  their  responsiveness 
to  good  wages  and  fair  treatment. 

A  number  of  private  welfare  agencies  have  been  of  great 
service  in  this  connection  both  to  employers  and  to  the  Negro 
new-comers  to  Northern  industrial  centers.  Without  such  in 
telligent  guidance,  employers  have  given  up  as  a  hopeless  at 
tempt  their  experiment  of  using  Negro  labor. 

Taking  next  the  change  in  the  Negro's  relation  to  em 
ployers  in  the  South,  perhaps  the  most  far-reaching  effect  of 
the  war  conditions  has  been  the  decided  change  in  the  estimate 
placed  upon  the  Negro  as  a  factor  in  the  productive  life  of 
the  South.  Preceding  the  war  and  the  migration  North  there 
was  such  a  surplus  of  Negro  workers  in  many  localities  that 
when  one  worker  dropped  out  or  departed  it  was  an  easy 
matter  to  secure  another  to  fill  his  place.  After  the  migra 
tion  North  had  developed  and  after  there  was  a  considerable 
increase  in  war  demands  for  the  building  of  cantonments  and 
munitions  plants  in  the  South,  a  shortage  of  labor  followed 
inevitably.  Because  of  this  shortage,  there  arose  a  revalua 
tion  of  Negro  labor.  The  Southern  employer  began  to  at 
tach  a  new  importance  to  the  Negro  wage-earner. 

In  the  second  place,  while  in  some  localities  attempts  were 
made  to  use  compulsory  measures  to  force  workers  to  stick 
to  their  tasks,  in  a  majority  of  localities  the  larger  view  of 
persuasion  and  better  treatment  has  prevailed.  The  result  is 
that  such  reasonable  measures  as  increase  in  wages,  the  im 
provement  of  working  conditions  and  the  enlargement  of  edu 
cational  and  other  community  facilities  have  gained  headway. 
Thoughtful  representatives  of  both  races  have  met  in  many 
localities  to  discuss  their  problems.  In  these  ways  better  un 
derstanding,  greater  contentment  and  increased  production  an 
the  part  of  Negro  workers  have  been  promoted.  Public  opin 
ion  as  expressed  in  the  white  public  press  has  been  more  fav 
orable  toward  the  Negro,  and  the  desire  for  meting  out  jus 
tice  to  him  has  found  increased  expression.  May  I  again  ven 
ture  to  refer  to  the  special  work  of  the  Department  of  Labor 
through  its  Negro  Workers'  Advisory  Committees  and  through 
its  state  supervisors  of  Negro  Economics  appointed  by  the 


264  SELECTED  ARTICLES 

Department?  In  Florida,  in  Mississippi,  in  Georgia,  in  North 
Carolina  and  in  Virginia  these  committees,  made  up  of  repre 
sentative  Negro  citizens  and  representative  white  citizens,  to 
gether  with  these  supervisors,  who  are  Negroes  of  ability, 
have  been  large  factors  in  securing  conferences  of  the  races 
and  frank  discussion  of  local  labor  problems  from  the  think 
ing  people  of  both  groups.  In  this  way,  more  amicable  ad 
justment  of  working  and  living  conditions  in  the  South  is  be 
ing  promoted.  Similar  committees  and  officials  have  been  ap 
pointed  in  five  northern  states. 

It  should  be  emphasized,  that  although  these  efforts  to  ad 
just  relations  of  white  employers  and  Negro  wage-earners  in 
the  South  during  the  unusual  war  conditions  have  been  large 
ly  experimental,  the  experiment  has  been  successful  beyond 
the  most  sanguine  expectations.  The  experiment,  North  and 
South,  has  established  beyond  question  the  practical  value  of 
the  plan  by  which  representatives  of  Negro  wage-earners 
meet  representatives  of  white  employers  in  committees  and 
conferences.  It  has  demonstrated  that  such  committees  and 
conferences  can  achieve  substantial  results  in  adjusting  the  lo 
cal  Negro  labor  problems,  which  changing  conditions  and  re 
lations  have  produced. 

Let  us  turn,  now,  to  the  effect  of  war  conditions  on  Negro 
labor  through  the  gradually  changing  attitude  of  white  wage- 
earners.  This  part  of  the  question  is  largely  to  the  forefront 
in  the  North.  In  many  of  the  war  industries,  there  was  such  a 
demand  for  labor,  both  North  and  South,  that  large  numbers 
of  white  workmen  passed  on  to  the  higher-paid  occupation.  As 
a  consequence,  Negroes  were  freely  admitted  to  many  of  the 
occupations  formerly  monopolized  by  white  workers  and 
from  which  Negroes  were  previously  excluded.  With  the  de 
mand  for  labor  so  much  greater  than  the  supply,  the  fear  of 
white  workmen  that  Negroes  would  be  their  competitors  at  a 
lower  wage  was  greatly  lessened  in  many  semi-skilled  and 
skilled  occupations. 

It  may  be  well  to  remember  that  this  danger  of  paying 
Negroes  lower  wages  exists  not  because  Negroes  want  lower 
wages  than  other  workers  but  because,  as  in  the  case  of  wo 
men,  there  is  a  prevalent  idea  that  Negro  wage-earners  should 
be  paid  less  than  white  wage- earners  for  the  same  work.  We 
have  actually  had  governmental  wage-fixing  authorities  to  act 
upon  this  idea. 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  265 

Those  who  accept  this  notion  overlook  the  fact  that  the 
Negro  buys  his  bread,  butter  and  beefsteak  in  the  same  mar 
ket  as  other  purchasers;  that  investigations  have  shown  that 
he  pays  higher  rent  for  similar  houses,  and  that  his  clothing 
must  be  bought  at  current  prices  in  about  the  same  quantity 
as  other  workers.  It  would  seem  that  the  Negro  is  expected 
to  produce  from  his  dark  skin  some  sort  of  alchemy  which 
will  transmute  smaller  pay  than  white  workers  receive  into 
equal  standards  of  food,  shelter  and  clothing  in  spite  of  simi 
lar  demands  from  grocer,  landlord  and  clothier. 

Some  of  the  most  striking  evidence  of  the  change  in  the 
attitude  of  white  workmen  is  the  growing  recognition  given 
Negro  workmen  by  white  labor  unions.  In  many  of  the  city 
centers  where  union  organization  is  strong,  the  unions  are 
opening  their  doors  to  Negro  members.  In  such  centers  as 
Chicago  and  Cleveland  Negroes  are  represented  in  labor  lo 
cals  and  union  councils.  But  there  still  remains  considerable 
fear  of  competition  in  the  future  and  this  reacts  in  some  oc 
cupations  to  keep  up  the  hostility  of  white  workers  toward  the 
Negro's  entry  into  these  fields.  It  is  reasonable  to  conclude, 
however,  that  white  wage-earners  today  look  upon  the  en 
trance  of  Negroes  into  the  higher  grades  of  occupations  with 
less  opposition  than  existed  before  the  war. 

The  contact  in  industry  and  in  the  community  of  the  white 
and  Negro  working  classes  offers  one  of  the  most  delicate 
and  difficult  problems  of  the  changing  order.  It  is  here,  also, 
that  the  experiment  of  the  Department  of  Labor  with  its 
Negro  Workers'  Advisory  Committees  has  pointed  a  signifi 
cant  way  to  secure  the  introduction  of  the  Negro  into  indus 
try  by  peaceful  agreement  and  understanding  of  all  whose  in 
terests  are  affected  rather  than  by  force  and  the  confusion  of 
misunderstanding.  Already  race  disturbances  in  East  St.  Louis, 
111.;  Chester,  Pa.  and  Philadelphia  have  called  attention  to  the 
need  of  peaceful  adjustment.  The  federal  government  as  the 
best  and  most  impartial  agent  may  well  come  to  the  aid  of 
citizens,  white  and  black,  in  these  local  communities  and  help 
adjust  such  racial  labor  problems  before  outbreaks  occur 
rather  than  make  investigations  afterward.  Many  private  or 
ganizations  such  as  were  referred  to  a  few  minutes  ago  are 
eagerly  doing  their  best.  They  are  ready  to  join  hands  under 
government  cooperation. 

We  come,  now,  to  the  third  decided    effect    of   war    condi- 


266  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

tions  upon  Negro  labor:  namely,  the  effect  upon  the  Negro 
himself.  The  first  effect  upon  the  Negro  was  to  increase  his 
mobility.  Let  me  remind  you  that  when  the  great  war 
started  not  only  did  immigration  from  Europe  practically 
cease,  but  thousands  of  the  foreign  born  went  home  in  re 
sponse  to  the  call  of  their  countries'  needs.  Northern  employ 
ers  who  had  depended  upon  the  immigrant  for  labor  found 
their  supply  vanishing.  At  the  same  time  their  contracts  for 
European  war  orders  were  increasing  by  leaps  and  bounds. 
The  owners  and  operators  of  Northern  mines,  factories  and 
railroads  faced  a  serious  labor  shortage.  They  soon  discovered 
an  unworked  labor  supply  in  the  Negroes  of  the  South.  Early 
in  the  spring  of  1915,  their  agents  began  to  comb  the  South 
seeking  these  workers. 

Preceding  the  appearance  of  Northern  labor  agents  in  the 
South,  floods  and  drouths,  the  spread  of  the  boll  weevil  in  the 
cotton  states,  the  low  price  of  cotton  for  several  years  pre 
ceding  the  war,  lynchings  and  other  racial  friction,  together 
with  other  unsatisfactory  local  conditions,  had  created  eco 
nomic  and  community  situations  that  caused  unusual  restless 
ness  in  the  Negro  population.  There  was  needed  only  the 
creation  of  such  a  labor  vacuum  in  the  North  and  the  guiding 
hand  of  the  labor  agent  to  draw  thousands  of  unskilled  Negro 
workers,  along  with  some  of  the  skilled  workers,  into  North 
ern  industrial  centers.  It  has  been  estimated  that  by  January 
i,  1918,  between  four  hundred  and  five  hundred  thousand 
Negroes  had  migrated  north. 

This  effect  of  war  conditions  on  Negro  labor  not  only  in 
creased  its  mobility  by  moving  about  a  half  million  of  Negroes 
from  one  section  of  the  country  to  the  other,  but  it  also  accel 
erated  the  constant,  slower  migration  to  Northern  centers,  a 
movement  which  has  been  going  on  for  more  than  a  generation. 

The  change  under  war  conditions  did  more  than  this.  Not 
only  did  thousands  move,  but  also  there  was  created  in  the 
mind  of  Negro  rural  peasants  and  urban  wage-earners  a  new 
consciousness  of  the  fact  that  they  have  the  liberty  and  the 
opportunity  to  move  freely  from  place  to  place.  The  migra 
tion  broke  down  much  of  their  timidity.  It  gave  the  rank  and 
file  the  belief  that  they  could  move  to  another  part  of  the 
country  and  succeed  in  gaining  a  foothold  in  its  industrial  life 
and  activity. 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  267 

The  effects  of  the  war  changes  went  even  further.  The 
mind  of  the  masses  of  the  Negro  people  received  the  impres 
sion  that  all  kinds  and  types  of  work  might  at  some  time  be 
open  to  them ;  that  they  need  not  be  content  with  clinging  to 
poorer  paid  occupations  but  might  aspire  to  those  requiring 
greater  efficiency  and  affording  larger  pay.  And  here  let  me 
emphasize  what  a  change  in  Negro  life  this  means.  In  years 
past  in  New  York  and  other  cities  Negro  boys  and  girls 
dropped  out  of  school  in  the  lower  grades  because  they  re 
peatedly  said  there  was  no  use  in  going  any  further,  when  a 
Negro  could  only  get  a  menial  job  anyway  and  that  they  were 
already  prepared  for  that.  I  sometimes  surmise  what  the 
American  public  would  do  if  in  some  way  it  could  understand 
that  North  and  South,  on  railroads,  in  factories,  in  erection 
of  buildings  and  in  government  projects,  thousands  of  work 
men  have  been  denied  the  fundamental  opportunity  of  earn 
ing  an  honest  living  at  jobs  for  which  they  were  competent, 
for  no  other  reason  than  because  they  are  Negroes. 

A  prominent  writer  several  years  ago  said  Negroes  could 
get  any  job  under  the  sun.  He  overlooked  the  fact  that  to 
day  much  of  industry  is  carried  on  in  the  shade. 

To  sum  up  the  point  in  a  sentence,  the  migration  of  these 
thousands  of  Negro  workers  to  the  North  and  the  consequent 
changes  under  war  conditions  brought  consciously  to  their 
•minds  the  fact  that  freedom  for  any  one  means  liberty  to 
move  freely  from  place  to  place  and  opportunity  to  change 
his  job  when  it  is  advantageous  to  do  so. 

In  parenthesis,  let  me  add  that  this  new  consciousness  of 
liberty  which  is  dawning  upon  the  Negro  people  calls  not  only 
for  the  best  guidance  their  own  leaders  can  give,  but  also  for 
the  sympathetic  understanding  of  white  Americans.  Negroes 
are  faced  with  the  problem  of  walking  the  narrow  path  of 
liberty  and  of  avoiding  the  precipice  of  license.  To  shake  off 
the  bondage  of  servility  and  to  take  on  the  restraints  of  civ 
ility  is  no  easy  task  for  any  people. 

Another  effect  of  the  war  upon  the  Negro  himself  has  been 
to  open  up  a  wider  range  of  occupations,  in  the  North  espe 
cially.  This  might  logically  be  discussed  under  the  point  of 
the  relation  of  Negroes  to  white  employers,  but  the  result 
has  been  felt  largely  within  the  Negro  group.  Hence  it  is 
placed  in  this  part  of  the  discussion.  This  change  has  been 


268  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

more  far-reaching  than  the  most  hopeful  might  have  expected 
for  the  next  twenty  years. 

In  1910  there  were  5,192,535  Negroes  of  the  nation  gain 
fully  employed.  This  was  about  one-half  of  the  total  Negro 
population.  More  than  one-half  of  those  gainfully  employed 
were  engaged  in  agriculture  and  nearly  one-half  of  those  in 
agriculture  were  only  farm  laborers.  In  manufacturing,  in 
transportation  and  in  trade  occupations  the  large  majority  of 
Negroes,  male  and  female,  previous  to  the  war  had  been 
given  opportunity  to  work  principally  as  laborers,  porters  and 
the  like — the  poorer  paid  places.  Furthermore,  more  than  one- 
fifth  of  the  Negroes  gainfully  employed  in  1910  were  classi 
fied  as  engaged  directly  in  domestic  and  personal  service.  In 
1908-9,  I  made  some  studies  of  the  Negro  at  work  in  New 
York  and  other  northern  cities.  At  that  time  probably  more 
than  85  per  cent  of  Negro  women  gainfully  employed  in 
northern  centers  and  about  75  per  cent  of  Negro  men  were 
engaged  in  domestic  and  personal  service. 

War  conditions  have  made  some  changes.  Just  how  great 
the  changes  have  been  we  cannot  tell  before  the  Census  of 
1920.  But  in  some  northern  cities,  the  change  has  been  sig 
nificant.  In  Detroit,  Michigan,  in  1914,  for  example,  there 
were  probably  not  a  thousand  Negroes  in  all  the  factories  in 
that  great  automobile  center.  The  latest  report  from  Detroit 
about  two  months  ago  stated  that  probably  between  twelve 
and  fifteen  thousand  are  now  engaged  in  the  automobile  in 
dustries  of  that  city  alone.  In  the  steel  districts  of  Pittsburgh, 
within  twelve  months,  the  number  of  Negro  workers  in  the 
various  plants  increased  in  some  cases  35  per  cent  and  in  others 
as  high  as  100  per  cent.  I  am  informed  that  the  General 
Electric  Company  of  Pittsburgh,  which  had  not  employed 
Negroes  before  1914,  now  employs  scores  of  both  men  and 
women.  In  New  York,  where  ten  years  ago  it  was  quite 
difficult  to  get  a  Negro  girl  admitted  into  one  of  the  cheaper 
branches  of  the  garment  trades,  now  scores  of  Negro  women 
are  daily  employed  and  the  manufacturers  are  advertising  for 
more. 

Unlike  many  other  problems  brought  to  the  surface  by 
war  conditions,  this  racial  labor  situation  probably  can  best 
be  guided  toward  a  constructive  policy  through  the  help  of 
the  federal  government  acting  as  a  central,  coordinating 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  269 

agency  for  the  private  organizations  and  interests  involved. 
Repeatedly,  I  have  found  white  employers  and  white  work 
men  willing  to  meet  Negro  representatives  under  Department 
of  Labor  supervision,  when  they  would  not  consider  it  other 
wise.  Negroes  have  comparatively  few  unions  or  employers' 
organizations.  They  have  felt  the  power  of  both  organized 
capital  and  organized  labor.  Negroes  have  had  to  deal  with 
both  in  an  effort  to  secure  an  American's  chance  to  work. 

Yesterday,  when  I  read  the  resolutions  of  the  councillors 
of  the  Chamber  of  Commerce  of  the  United  States  on  regu 
larity  of  employment,  the  right  of  workers  to  organize,  a 
minimum  wage  and  their  other  newly  adopted  principles  of 
industrial  democracy,  immediately  there  arose  in  my  mind  the 
question,  how  far  Negro  workers  will  share  these  benefits 
just  as  other  workers  do.  The  announcement  of  the  new 
policy  of  the  captains  of  industry  and  commerce  gave  new 
strength  to  my  conviction  that  there  should  be  some  govern 
mental  guidance  of  the  private  forces  toward  a  constructive 
policy  dealing  with  the  reconstruction  and  peace  problems 
growing  out  of  the  effect  of  war  conditions  upon  Negro  labor. 


THE  NEGRO  IN  INDUSTRY  * 

The  increased  tension  between  the  races  to  which  the  north 
ward  movement  contributed  had  two  main  determinants :  First, 
recognition  by  northern  industrialists  that  they  must  find  some 
source  of  cheap  labor  to  compensate  the  stoppage  of  immigration 
during  the  war  and  that  Southern  Negroes  were  available  for 
their  purposes.  Second,  a  realization  by  white  labor  unionists 
that  their  unions  were  endangered  by  an  influx  of  aliens, 
unorganized,  distrustful  of  labor  unions  and  therefore  difficult 
and  in  many  cases  impossible,  for  the  time,  to  unionize.  What 
has  been  called  "group  protection"  became  a  strong  motive 
among  white  unionists.  Independent  as  it  was  of  racial  antip 
athy—for  hostility  would  have  been  directed  against  any  laborers 
who  threatened  union  standards— it  speedily  fastened  on  the 
color  line.  Thus  from  the  industrial  movements  and  read 
justments  incident  to  the  war  grew  a  new  race  conflict. 

iFrom  Negro  Faces  America,  by  Herbert  J.  Seligmann.  p.  186-317. 
Copyright  by  Harper  &  Bros.  New  York.  1920. 


270  SELECTED  ARTICLES 

For  the  Negro  wartime  opportunity  was  especially  significant 
in  that  it  enabled  him,  as  never  before,  to  play  with  capital  and 
with  labor.  In  a  short  space  of  time  Negroes  found  themselves 
preferred  in  many  plants  from  which  they  had  previously  been 
excluded  or  where  they  had  been  employed  in  small  numbers 
only.  Their  leaders  urged  them  not  to  serve  as  strike-breakers; 
just  as  the  more  intelligent  of  the  white  union  leaders  had 
warned  against  dividing  labor  by  the  color  line.  In  practice, 
white  unionists  had  discriminated  against  the  Negro,  had  given 
him  no  jobs  when  the  allotments  were  made  or  had  given  the 
most  arduous  and  disagreeable  work;  had  either  discouraged 
his  joining  their  unions  or  had  made  it  virtually  impossible  for 
him  to  do  so.  In  practice,  the  Negro,  indoctrinated  with  the 
brotherhood  of  man  and  the  common  interests  of  all  labor, 
irrespective  of  color,  took  advantage  of  the  situation  which 
presented  itself.  Colored  workers  in  many  instances  saw  no 
reason  why,  having  always  been  made  victims  of  white  discrim 
ination,  they  should  fight  the  white  unionists'  battles. 

The  Negro's  distrust  of  unionism,  justified  as  it  has  been 
by  discrimination  in  the  North,  is  based  on  the  treatment  of 
colored  labor  in  the  South.  It  has  been  the  rule  to  exclude 
Negroes  from  white  unions.  In  June  of  1919,  it  was  reported 
that  two  thousand  white  unionists  of  Richmond,  Virginia,  had 
withdrawn  from  the  Virginia  Federation  of  Labor  because  W. 
C.  Page,  a  Negro  of  Newport  News,  had  been  seated  as  a 
delegate.  Under  the  circumstances,  the  American  Federation 
of  Labor,  at  its  spring  meeting  of  1919,  indulged  in  a  more  or 
less  empty  gesture  in  voting  with  but  one  dissenting  voice  to 
admit  Negroes  to  full  membership.  As  is  well  known,  the  Fed 
eration  exercises  no  power  over  its  constituent  international 
unions.  At  the  same  convention  at  which  the  vote  was  taken, 
a  representative  of  the  Brotherhood  of  Railway  Clerks  justified 
the  exclusion  of  Negroes  from  his  union  and  announced  that 
the  color  line  would  be  drawn  in  the  future  as  it  had  in  the 
past.  One  of  the  colored  delegates  to  the  convention  reported 
that  in  Virginia,  from  March  to  April,  1919,  43,°oo  Negro 
workmen  had  been  obliged  to  join  an  independent  labor  union 
because  thev  could  not  be  received  into  those  affiliated  with  the 
American  Federation  of  Labor. 

The  influence  of  Southern  delegates  to  the  Federation  had 
always  prevented  effective  measures  to  organize  Negroes.  Even 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  271 

where  the  constitution  of  the  union  contained  no  express  pro 
hibition,  it  was  not  uncommon  for  white  membership  to  double 
while  no  Negroes  were  added,  in  an  industry  giving  employ 
ment  to  both  white  and  colored  men.  Negroes  were  not  in  a 
position  to  constitute  a  menace  to  unionism'. 

With  the  demand  for  Negro  labor  to  supply  war-time  and 
after-war  needs,  the  scene  changed.  The  Federation  made  its 
gesture  of  generosity.  Unions  whose  strikers  were  being  replaced 
suddenly  discovered  the  brotherhood  of  man.  The  Negro  found 
himself  in  a  position  of  strategic  importance. 

Every  sort  of  opposition  was  offered  the  Negro  during  his 
progress  to  industrial  bargaining  power.  Mr.  Roger  Baldwin, 
who  worked  as  a  manual  laborer  in  the  Middle  West  during 
October  and  November  of  1919,  writes: 

"Everywhere,  of  course,  the  Negroes  had  the  hardest  and 
most  disagreeable  jobs.  Only  the  exceptional  Negro  had  risen 
above  the  lowest  paid  day  laborer  rate.  That's  the  rate  I  was 
getting  too!  And  it  was  these  men  I  found  really  thinking, 
keenly  conscious  of  the  relation  of  their  own  problem  to  the  race 
and  to  labor.  Every  one  ot  the  men  was  in  favor  ot  the 
unions,  but  every  one  of  them  complained  of  union  discrimin 
ation  against  the  Negro.  They  are  ready  for  organization  which 
they  felt  would  be  fair  to  them. 

"On  the  other  hand,  there  was  a  feeling  of  desperation 
because  of  the  almost  universal  ignoring  or  contempt  of  the 
Negro.  Every  man  I  spoke  to  talked  of  warfare  between  the 
races.  All  of  them  were  preparing  to  resist  further  invasion  of 
what  they  regarded  as  their  rights.  They  didn't  seem  to  have 
faith  that  white  men,  even  in  the  unions,  were  going  to  make 
common  cause  with  them.  Even  the  scabs  in  the  steel  mill  at 
Homestead,  Pennsylvania,  where  Negroes  have  been  imported 
by  the  thousand,  were  all  for  the  union  and  all  for  a  strike  at 
the  right  time,  but  they  felt  that  they  owed  nothing  to  white 
men  who  had  so  long  ignored  and  oppressed  them.  Not  a 
single  organizer  had  been  sent  into  the  Pittsburgh  steel  dis 
trict  ...  I  couldn't  help  but  feel  as  I  looked  around  at  the 
forces  lined  up  about  me  that  the  immediate  future  of  Amer 
ican  labor  depends  on  what  unions  will  do  with  the  Negro. 
It  is  the  white  man's  job  if  he  is  to  make  the  solidarity  of 
labor  a  living  fact." 

Discrimination   against   Negro   labor   bore   fruit   in   the   steel 


272  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

strike  of  1919.  The  conditions  which  materially  helped  to 
produce  the  East  St.  Louis  riots  and  the  Chicago  disorders  were 
reproduced.  Despite  opposition  in  the  South,  where  labor  re 
cruiters  and  agents  risked  death  at  the  hands  of  a  mob  if  their 
errand  were  made  known,  Negroes  were  brought  North.  Negro 
welfare  workers  were  employed  at  the  Homestead  and  Duqnesne 
plants  of  the  Carnegie  Steel  Company,  at  the  Monessen  plant 
of  the  Pittsburgh  Steel  Company;  and  by  the  Lockhart  Iron 
and  Steel  Company.  Three  of  the  four  basic  mills  of  the 
United  States  Steel  Corporation  and  the  largest  of  the  inde 
pendent  mills  pursued  the  policy  of  encouraging  employment  of 
Negroes.  During  the  first  six  weeks  of  the  steel  strike  six 
thousand  Negroes,  it  was  estimated,  were  brought  to  Allegheny 
County. 

At  Lackawanna,  before  the  strike  there  were  said  to  be  seven 
thousand  employees  of  whom  seventy-two  were  Negroes.  Dur 
ing  the  strike  the  mill  was  operated  chiefly  with  Negro  labor. 
Some  of  the  steel  mills  employed  Negro  preachers.  Early  in 
November  a  representative  of  the  Urban  League  said  that 
Negroes  in  the  steel  works  had  remained  at  work  during  the 
strike  almost  to  a  man.  There  were,  of  course,  exceptions,  but 
in  general,  however  favorably  they  were  disposed  to  white 
labor  unions,  Negroes  became  effective  instruments  to  be  used 
against  white  unions. 

If  the  vote  of  the  American  Federation  of  Labor  to  unionize 
Negroes  was  an  anticipation  and  a  recognition  of  the  menace 
of  division  of  labor  along  color  lines,  that  state  of  mind  found 
recognition  in  the  South.  For  the  first  time  to  any  marked  extent 
white  labor  realized  the  necessity  of  making  allies  of  colored 
workers.  Any  such  general  change  of  front  by  white  workmen 
would  menace  the  very  foundations  of  the  color  line  as  it  is 
drawn  in  the  South.  It  is,  therefore,  significant  to  note  what 
extraordinary  measures  were  adopted  to  prevent  a  coalition  of 
white  and  colored  labor.  As  always,  the  advocates  of  the  color 
line  brought  about  violence  to  sustain  the  division.  It  is, 
therefore,  a  melodramatic  episode  which  reveals  the  forces 
which  were  at  work  in  the  South. 

As  the  color  line  is  stretched  and  becomes  a  matter  of 
national  concern,  it  becomes  more  and  more  evident  that  colored 
labor  cannot  be  treated  as  though  it  were  a  monstrosity  or  a 
rare  specimen.  Too  much  evidence  is  at  hand  which  demon- 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  273 

strates  that  not  only  have  colored  men  done  their  work  as  well 
as  white,  often  increasing  output  in  factories  manned  previously 
by  white  men;  but  also  have  worked  in  amity,  without  friction, 
among  white  workers.  The  elaborate  plans  made  by  the  steel 
companies  to  obtain  and  to  keep  Negro  labor  tell  their  own 
story.  The  Urban  League  of  Pittsburgh  found  that  the  Negro 
laborer  "can  do  anything  the  white  worker  can  do."  If  some 
Negroes  are  unsteady,  on  the  other  hand,  there  are  "hundreds 
and  hundreds  and  even  thousands  of  Negroes  who  have  not 
lost  a  single  day  and  are  counted  upon  by  concerns  as  their 
most  dependable  men." 

It  is  not  necessary  to  draw  from  the  evidence  presented  any 
conclusions  other  than  those  written  upon  the  face  of  the  facts : 
namely,  that  the  Negro  has  enormously  enlarged  his  sphere  of 
opportunity  in  industry  by  doing  satisfactorily  the  work  allotted 
to  him;  that  he  has  worked  with  white  men  amicably;  and  that 
the  future  of  the  American  labor  movement  will  be  involved 
to  some  extent  in  the  position  which  the  Negro  workman  is 
given  or  takes.  In  the  existing  state  of  industrial  organization, 
the  Negro's  capabilities  as  they  may  be  limited  or  determined 
by  racial  inheritance,  play  a  small  part.  With  few  exceptions 
industries  are  not  so  thoroughly  organized  that  slight  individual 
and  psychological  differences  make  themselves  felt  in  large- 
scale  production.  Meanwhile  the  test  of  practice  has  been 
applied.  The  results  have  shown  industrial  corporations  eager 
to  employ  and  to  retain  Negro  labor.  That  is  a  fact  which, 
regardless  of  racial  prejudice,  actual  or  alleged  racial  "inferior 
ity,"  it  is  necessary  for  any  student  of  labor  currents  to  take 
into  account. 

The  Negro  has  been  engaged  in  conquering  and  making  his 
own  new  industrial  fields.  That  development  was  bound  to 
come  in  time.  It  was  undoubtedly  accelerated  by  the  World 
War,  as  much  as  fifty  years,  in  the  estimation  of  a  number  of 
observers.  One  fruit  of  the  acceleration  was  acute  conflict 
which  came  of  the  same  sort  of  maladjustment  that  attended 
the  influx  of  immigrant  labor  from  abroad.  What  fostered 
the  violence  and  the  riots  of  1919,  some  of  them  erroneously 
called  race  riots,  was  the  unduly  sensitive,  in  fact,  morbid, 
state  of  the  public  mind  with  regard  to  color.  It  rests  very 
largely  with  labor,  white  and  colored,  whether  the  divisions 
that  have  caused  havoc  are  to  be  perpetuated  and  made  irrec- 


274  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

oncilable.  The  broadest  path  toward  harmonization  of  racial 
differences  in  the  future  lies  in  labor  organization.  As  soon 
as  a  community  of  interest  is  recognized  between  white  arid 
colored  workers,  as  it  was  recognized  in  the  heart  of  the 
South,  in  Bogalusa,  Louisiana,  race  prejudice  fades  into  its 
proper  place  as  a  bogy,  a  set  of  ungoverned  and  unanalyzed 
emotions,  which  can  be  stimulated  to  the  detriment  of  the 
people  who  harbor  those  emotions.  In  more  than  one  place 
the  color  line  is  being  swept  irresistibly  out  of  labor  organ 
izations. 

The  question  is  still  debated  whether  the  Negro  is  or  is 
not  a  "good  union  man."  In  fact,  the  Negro  was  and  has 
been  shown  to  be  systematically  discriminated  against,  until 
the  industrial  weight  of  his  numbers  and  his  competence  made 
itself  felt.  If  many  Negroes  are  not  now  good  union  men,  it 
is  because  they  have  never,  despite  their  interest  and  their 
desire,  been  given  opportunity  to  have  an  effective  part  in  the 
American  Labor  movement. 


BILL  OF  LABOR  RIGHTS  1 

It  is  not  enough,  to  train  the  Negro  for  industry.  In 
dustry  must  be  open  to  him  upon  a  basis  of  justice.  In  the 
past  it  has  been  the  industrial  part  of  the  color  line  that  has 
most  impeded  the  Negro's  progress.  He  has  been  barred  from 
the  trades  to  a  serious  extent  by  the  fact  of  his  being  barred 
from  membership  in  the  labor-unions  of  the  country.  But  now 
a  start  has  been  made  toward  correcting  this  feature  of  the 
race  situation.  At  its  recent  Atlantic  City  meeting  the  American 
Federation  of  Labor  voted  to  grant  unconditional  membership 
to  the  Negro.  Afro-American  periodicals  here  and  there  refer 
to  this  step  as  next  in  importance  to  the  abolition  of  chattel 
slavery.  Theoretically  this  decision  of  the  federation  makes  it 
possible  for  the  Negro  workman  to  enter  all  of  the  skilled  and 
better-paid  trades  and  carry  on  a  genuine  test  of  merit  un 
hampered  by  racial  discrimination.  This  action  of  the  federa 
tion  was  not  inspired  by  any  abstract  theory  of  the  race  problem, 
but  was  the  inevitable  result  of  conditions  brought  about  by  the 

1  From  article,  The  Clash  of  Color,  by  Glenn  Frank.  Century.  99  .-86-98. 
November,  1919. 


I  THE   NEGRO   PROBLEM  275 

war.  I  have  already  referred  to  the  fact  that  the  withdrawal 
of  many  white  American  workmen  from  industry  for  military 
service,  the  return  of  so  many  Italians  and  other  South-European 
laborers  to  their  native  lands  for  war  duty,  and  the  practical 
cessation  of  immigration  during  the  war  resulted  in  a  labor 
shortage  in  Northern  industries;  that  this  resulted  in  a  great 
influx  of  Negro  labor  into  the  Northern  States.  The  American 
Federation  of  Labor  had  to  reckon  with  the  presence  of  this 
great  body  of  colored  workmen  already  in  Northern  industry  as 
a  result  of  the  migration  of  the  last  three  years.  It  saw  that 
the  great  need  for  labor  during  the  reconstruction  period, 
coupled  with  an  imminent  restriction  of  immigration  by  Con 
gressional  act,  would  probably  keep  a  steady  stream  of  Negro 
labor  flowing  from  the  South  for  some  time  to  come.  If  this 
mass  of  colored  workmen  should  be  left  unorganized  or  admitted 
to  a  qualified  membership  only,  there  would  be  great  danger 
to  organized  white  labor  in  the  use  of  colored  workmen  as 
strike-breakers.  If  the  mass  of  Negro  workmen  in  Northern 
industries,  dissatisfied  with  discriminatory  treatment  at  the  hands 
of  organized  labor,  were  made  available  as  "scab"  labor,  a 
complicated  situation  would  obtain.  The  American  Federation 
of  Labor  saw  this  and  hastened  to  throw  its  doors  open  to  the 
Negro.  If  this  vote  can  be  translated  into  fact,  labor  will  face 
the  issues  of  the  new  era  with  a  solid  front. 

There  are  two  factors  that  will  make  difficult  the  carrying 
out  of  this  vote.  In  the  first  place,  there  is  bound  to  be  much 
friction  between  white  and  black  workmen  as  the  Negro  enters 
the  unions  and  takes  his  place  alongside  the  white  workman. 
The  old  race  prejudice  will  not  be  exorcised  by  executive  order. 
In  the  second  place,  it  is  not  at  all  certain  that  Negro  workmen 
will  readily  adapt  themselves  to  a  far-reaching  program  of 
organization.  They  may  feel  that  their  best  interests  lie  in 
playing  a  separate  game  with  capital.  Mr.  John  Mitchell,  the 
editor  of  a  Negro  periodical  in  Richmond,  Virginia,  has  stated 
these  two  difficulties  clearly.  He  writes: 

"The  greatest  menace  to  organized  labor  as  opposed  to 
organized  capital  is  the  black  multitude  that  entered  the  indus 
trial  plants  of  the  country  and  demonstrated  beyond  the  shadow 
of  a  doubt  that  they  could  execute  and  master  the  tasks 
assigned.  .  .  It  was  organized  capital  and  not  organized  labor 
that  gave  to  black  labor  the  position  that  it  now  occupies.  Will 


276  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

the  colored  men  accept  the  invitation  and  join  the  white  labor- 
unions  or  will  they  stand  out  as  independent  units  under  their 
own  leaders  and  from  their  respective  platforms  deal  directly 
with  the  moneyed  interests  of  the  country?  On  this  decision 
will  depend  the  fate  of  the  white  laboring  interests  of  America 
as  represented  by  the  American  Federation  of  Labor. 

"It  is  also  an  interesting  question  as  to  whether  the  American 
Federation  of  Labor  can  hold  in  leash  its  own  membership 
should  the  invitation  be  generally  accepted  by  the  colored  men 
of  this  country." 

Mr.  Samuel  Gompers  said  regarding  the  admission  of  colored 
workmen  into  unqualified  membership  in  the  federation  that  "it 
is  one  of  the  most  important  steps  taken  by  the  federation  in 
many  years."  It  is  undoubtedly  a  challenge  to  the  good  temper, 
the  patience,  and  the  statesmanship  of  the  leaders  of  black  and 
white  labor. 


THE  NEGRO  AND  HIS  OPPORTUNITY  l 

We  are  told  that — as  a  race — Negroes  surpass  whites  in 
acuteness  of  some  of  the  senses,  namely  those  of  seeing, 
hearing  and  location.  With  these  advantages  with  which  na 
ture  has  endowed  the  Negro,  why  should  he  not  surpass  in 
those  arts  in  which  the  senses  named  play  an  important  part. 
The  Negro  in  his  original  habitat  possessed  great  facility  in 
metal-working  trades — our  white  ancestor  fashioned  his  weap 
on  and  crude  implement  out  of  stone,  the  Negro  used  iron  for 
his.  The  Negroes  of  Guinea  several  centuries  past  were  ex 
perts  in  the  art  of  bronze  casting.  So  much  for  the  past 
performances  of  the  Negro  race,  what  we  are  concerned  with 
is  the  present  capabilities.  He  was  first  imported  as  a  slave 
and  in  most  cases  since  his  emancipation  has  been  content  to 
retain  the  relative  position  of  a  servant.  Our  work  or  fight 
law  precipitated  many  Negroes  into  actual  industrial  life  from 
positions  as  personal  servants  and  many  will  not  return  to 
their  former  station.  These  have  earned  the  right  to  be 
called  producers. 

As  I  see  it  the  problems  accruing  to  the  employment  of 
Negro  labor  can  be  classified  in  a  very  few  points: 

»By  Ralph  W.  Immel.    Industrial  Management.   58:75-6.  July,   1919. 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  277 

1.  The  problem  of  the  extent  of  segregation  is  most  im 
portant.     In  this  connection  I  desire  to  cite  the  experience  of 
a  man  who  has  made    a    distinct    success    of    employment    of 
Negro  labor. 

Mr.  Shamberger  started  on  the  assumption  that  in  his 
eyes  the  value  of  a  man  lay  only  in  his  productive  power  and 
not  in  the  amount  of  pigment  in  his  skin.  His  toilets,  lockers 
and  shower  baths  were  separated  on  each  side  of  a  large 
room.  One  side  for  Negroes  and  the  other  side  for  whites. 
Inside  this  room  the  color  line  was  drawn  but  as  soon  as  the 
man,  black  or  white,  stepped  outside  he  became  a  neutral 
shade  in  the  eyes  of  the  superintendent  and  his  foremen  and 
as  noted  above  his  status  was  only  measured  by  his  work. 
Most  important  of  all,  in  my  eyes,  was  the  fact  that  no  at 
tempt  was  made  to  have  white  gangs  or  colored  gangs.  The 
man's  color  was  completely  ignored.  The  proof  of  the  suc 
cess  of  this  lay  not  only  in  the  satisfactory  work  turned  out 
by  the  Negroes  but  in  the  matter-of-fact  way  in  which  the 
whites  accepted  the  situation.  And  this  has  not  resulted  in  un 
due  familiarity  on  the  part  of  the  Negro  toward  his  white 
fellow  workman.  The  work  in  this  department  meant  the  di 
viding  up  into  numerous  gangs  of  twos,  threes,  and  so  on. 
These  may  be  two  whites  and  one  Negro  or  vice  versa  and 
the  men — all  of  them — have  come  to  be  unconscious  of  the 
color  of  the  man  next  them  as  long  as  he  holds  up  his  end. 
So  much  against  segregation  in  actual  working  and  for  segre 
gation  in  welfare  relations. 

2.  The  seeming    lack    of    responsibility    of    the    Negro.     I 
have  often  heard   it   said    (and   justly  in   many  cases)    that   a 
Negro  does  not  feel  responsibility  for  results  that  is  essential 
in  a  man  to  whom  important  work  with  a  possibility  of  high 
spoilage   existing  is   to  be   given. 

This,  I  believe,  is  capable  of  development.  It  is  true  that 
naturally  the  Negro  is  possessed  with  a  large  amount  of  un 
reasoning,  child-like  optimism,  being  equally  impartial  with 
his  own  as  well  as  other's  troubles,  but  when  it  is  "put  up  to 
him"  in  the  right  way  a  Negro  welcomes  responsibility,  and  I 
believe  possesses  a  higher  degree  of  faithfulness  in  following 
out  orders  implicitly  than  many  white  and  especially  alien 
workmen.  Let  him  know  that  you  are  trusting  him  and  meeting 


278  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

him  in  a  business  (not  social)  way  on  the  same  plane  and  you 
will  find  that  he  will  rise  to  the  emergency. 

3.  The    proper    selection    of    work    to    start    negroes    on. 
(After  a  period    of    probation    it    will    be    found    that    many 
Negroes  have  outgrown  the  need  for  methods  noted  below.) 

Work  in  which  a  Negro  can— by  extra  exertion  for  a  per 
iod — gain  a  spell  of  rest  is  most  popular.  Sustained  effort 
has  a  dampening  effect  on  the  naturally  buoyant  nature  of  the 
negro  and  will  (on  the  start)  discourage  him  with  his  job  as 
well  as  himself. 

Or  work  requiring  a  display  of  great  strength  intermit 
tently  is  also  popular  with  the  Negro.  (The  love  of  the  spec 
tacular  has  a  mitigating  effect  on  the  Negro's  usefulness  as 
in  many  cases  it  increases  his  liability  to  accident.) 

Work,  if  such  can  be  found,  in  which  the  operations  pos^ 
sess  a  natural  rhythm  and  which  can  be  carried  on  to  the  accom 
paniment  of  a  song  suits  the  Negro. 

I  do  not  know  whether  physiology  will  substantiate  me  in 
this  statement,  but  I  have  found  that  the  Negro  as  a  class 
possesses  less  muscular  coordination  than  the  white  in  that 
they  seem  to  be  most  susceptible  to  strains. 

4.  Supervision   of    the   Negro.     It   is   most   important   that 
Negro  laborers,  whether  all  men  in  gang  are  Negroes  or  not, 
should  be  supervised  by  a  white  foreman  until  such  time  as  a 
careful  selection  can  be  made  of  a  foreman  of  their  own  col 
or.     My  opinion  is   that   the  opportunity   for  advancement  for 
the  Negro  does  not  lie  along  lines  of  supervision  as  much  as 
perfection  of   individuals    to    a    point    capable    of    doing    high 
grade   mechanical  work. 

5.  The  problem  of  improvidence  in  the  colored  race.     The 
per  capita  wealth  of  the  colored  race  is  only  a  small  percent 
age  of  that  of  the  white  race.     Needless  to  say,  the  man  who 
will   become   an   asset   to   his   country  and   to   his   company  is 
the  one  who  saves  toward  a  home,  education  of  his  offspring 
or  for  any  purpose.     This  is  the  man    who    will    work    steady 
and  try  to  advance. 

6.  The  natural  laziness  and  lassitude  of  the  colored  man. 
This    heading    hardly    sounds    like    a    recommendation    for    the 
Negro  but  in  a  certain  way  even  this  unmistakable  quality  has 
its    compensations    to    the   employer. 

A   lazy  man    and   especially   a   Negro   will   instinctively  and 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  279 

even  unconsciously  find  the  easiest  way  to  perform  an  opera 
tion.  In  other  words,  the  Negro  is  the  original  efficiency  en 
gineer. 

If  he  is  given  a  certain  thing  to  do  in  a  certain  time  he. 
will  do  it  with  the  least  effort  and  in  a  way  which  will  allow 
him  the  longest  rest  period  out  of  the  time  allotted.  What 
an  opportunity  for  time  studies.  Unnecessary  steps  or  exer 
tion  are  repugnant  to  every  fibre  of  his  being,  and  he  will 
surely  find  the  line  of  least  resistance  which  will  at  the  same 
time  accomplish  the  desired  result  in  work  done.  Here  is  one 
time  where  the  Negro  will  use  his  head  to  save  his  hands. 

7.  Care   as    to   health   of    the   Negro   in   placing   on   certain 
work.     The  Negro   is   naturally  much  more   susceptible  to  pul 
monary  disease  than  the  white  race,  the  death  rate  from  con 
sumption   being   nearly   three   times    that    of   the    white.      It   is, 
therefore,  most  important  that  they  be  not  put  on  dusty  work 
unless   fully  protected    (and  then  it  is  a  dangerous  practice  as 
they  do  not     always     make     use     of     the     protecting     devices 
furnished). 

8.  Welfare    work    among    Negro    families.     This    subject 
possesses  so  many  ramifications  that  it  cannot  be  covered  here, 
but   the  work   of   a   visiting   nurse  with   a  practical  knowledge 
of   cooking,  hygiene  in    the    home,    proper    care    of    offspring, 
etc.,    would   prove    a    great    uplifting    force    and    one    which    if 
carried    out    should    result    in   great   good   to   the    recipients   of 
such  attention  as  well  as  a  benefit  to  the  employer  in  the  im 
provement  of   morale   among    the    male    members    of    families 
visited,   as   a   man   undoubtedly   reflects   the   atmosphere   of   his 
home  in  his  work. 

We  must  all  revise  our  estimate  of  the  Negro,  the  past 
two  years  have  wrought  in  him  a  change  and  the  orthodox 
ideas  on  Negro  psychology  must  be  revised  to  fit. 

We  cannot  expect  a  Negro  to  accept  from  fellow  workmen 
the  treatment  dealt  a  vassal  or  a  serf  and  then  at  the  same 
time  take  the  same  interest  as  a  white  workman. 

It  is  very  true  in  the  case  of  a  Negro  that  he  is  just 
what  he  is  made  to  feel,  if  in  his  work  he  is  accorded  equal 
consideration  with  others,  he  will  nearly  always  try  to  justify 
and  deserve  such  treatment  and  consideration.  The  propor 
tion  holds  good  for  all  kinds  of  treatment— bad  treatment  will 
beget  bad  work — and  best  treatment  (within  intelligent  and 
practical  limits)  will  beget  best  work. 


RACE    SEPARATION 

SEGREGATION  AND  COLONIZATION 

UNCONSTITUTIONALLY  OF  NEGRO  SEGRE 
GATION  * 

Until  comparatively  recently,  the  century  old  demand  that 
the  Negro  be  made  to  "keep  his  place"  has  had  reference  to 
the  political,  social  or  industrial  rights  or  privileges  which  he 
might  seek  to  share.  In  slavery  days,  through  the  reconstruc 
tion  era,  and  for  a  couple  of  decades  afterwards,  it  does  not 
appear  that  white  men  concerned  themselves  much  about  the 
places  in  which  Negroes  might  live,  but  since  the  closing  years 
of  the  last  century,  there  has  developed  in  many  communities, 
a  strong  and  sometimes  intense  desire  to  keep  the  Negro  from 
becoming  a  householder  in  white  neighborhoods.  Apparently  it 
is  not  the  mere  physical  proximity  which  is  most  objected  to. 
No  one  ever  says  that  a  Negro  servant  may  not  live  in  his 
employer's  home.  There  is  no  agitation  to  drive  him  out  of  the 
alley  houses  within  a  few  yards  of  the  back  windows  of  white 
residences.  Even  where  he  lives  on  the  same  street  and  in  the 
same  block,  he  can  be  tolerated,  if  his  home  is  plainly  less 
'desirable  than  that  of  his  white  neighbor.  The  resentment  is 
greatest  when  he  moves  into  a  row  of  houses,  all  of  which 
are  very  much  alike,  and  all  the  others  of  which  have  white 
occupants. 

But  if  the  dislike  for  the  implication  of  equality  is  at  the  root 
'of  the  difficulty,  it  is  not  true  that  the  coming  in  of  the  Negro 
hurts  nothing  but  the  racial  pride  of  a  white  neighborhood. 
Where  that  pride  is  strong,  the  fact  that  a  Negro  has  come  to 
dwell  in  one  of  a  number  of  houses  not  greatly  dissimilar  in 
pretension,  lowers  the  value  of  all  real  estate  in  the  vicinity. 
The  losers  are  not  disposed  to  be  philosophical.  Their  indigna 
tion  and  sense  of  loss  sometimes  leads  to  disorder  and  riot 

1  By    John    C.    Rose.     National    Municipal    Review.     8:104-5.     January, 
1919. 


282  SELECTED   ARTICLES 


Seven  or  eight  years  ago,  cities  and  towns  began  to  pass 
segregation  ordinances.  So  far  as  the  reported  cases  show,  the 
earliest  of  these  to  be  enacted  was  that  of  Richmond,  on  April 
19,  1911,  fifty  years  to  the  day  after  the  first  bloodshed  of  the 
civil  war.  A  month  later  Baltimore  followed  suit,  and  then 
many  other  places  did  likewise.  Within  a  few  years,  courts 
of  last  resort  of  no  less  than  five  states  passed  upon  the  validity 
of  such  enactments.  In  Kentucky  and  Virginia  they  were 
sustained.  In  Maryland  while  the  court  was  of  the  opinion 
that  it  was  lawful  to  segregate,  it  held  that  the  ordinance  before 
it  was  invalid,  because  it  prohibited  a  Negro,  who  had  owned  a 
house  before  its  passage,  from  moving  into  it  afterwards.  In 
Georgia  and  North  Carolina  the  ordinances  were  stricken  down. 
While  the  decision  in  each  of  these  cases  was  based  upon  some 
what  narrow  grounds,  each  court  discussed  the  general  question 
somewhat  fully,  and  in  a  way  to  suggest  that  in  its  opinion  the 
end  sought  could  not  lawfully  be  attained.  The  United  States 
Supreme  Court  gave  the  issue  unusually  full  and  deliberate 
consideration.  The  case  was  first  argued  in  April,  1916,  and 
reargued  a  year  later.  It  was  not  decided  until  November,  1917. 
The  Louisville  ordinance  was  in  controversy,  but  the  principle 
was  felt  to  be  common  to  the  whole  body  of  segregation  legis 
lation.  Briefs  were  filed  by  the  city  law  officers  of  Baltimore 
and  Richmond,  and  on  behalf  of  various  organizations  interested 
on  one  side  or  the  other.  Mr.  Justice  Day,  speaking  for  a  unan 
imous  court,  based  the  conclusion  reached  upon  grounds  which 
were  equally  fatal  to  all  attempts  to  establish  ghettoes  for  the 
blacks.  He  said: 

It  is  the  purpose  of  such  enactments,  and,  it  is  frankly  vowed  it  will 
be  their  ultimate  effect,  to  require  by  law,  at  least  in  residential  districts, 
the  compulsory  separation  of  the  races  on  account  of  color.  Such  action 
is  said  to  be  essential  to  the  maintenance  of  the  purity  of  the  races, 
although  it  is  to  be  noted  in  the  ordinance  under  consideration  that  the 
employment  of  colored  servants  in  white  families  is  permitted,  and  nearby 
residences  of  colored  persons  not  coming  within  the  blocks,  as  defined 
in  the  ordinance,  are  not  prohibited. 

It  is  urged  that  this  proposed  segregation  will  promote  the  public 
peace  by  preventing  race  conflicts.  Desirable  as  this  is,  and  important  as 
is  the  preservation  of  the  public  peace,  this  aim  cannot  be  accomplished 
by  laws  or  ordinances  which  deny  rights  created  or  protected  by  the 
federal  constitution. 

It  is  said  Aat  such  acquisitions  by  colored  persons  depreciate  property 
owned  in  the  neighborhood  by  white  persons.  But  property  may  be  ac 
quired  by  undesirable  white  neighbors  or  put  to  disagreeable  though  lawful 
uses  with  like  results. 

The  Maryland  court  of  appeals,  one  of  those  originally 
holding  that  segregation  was  lawful,  now  recognizes  that  the 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  283 

supreme  court  has  decided  otherwise.  Apparently  the  con 
troversy  as  to  the  legal  power  is  at  an  end. 

Those  who  would  shut  Negroes  out  of  a  larger  part  of  a 
city,  are  in  justice  bound  to  see  that  there  is  some  place  in 
which  they  may  dwell  in  health  and  comfort,  but  nobody  ever 
thought  of  this.  The  same  feeling  which  demands  segrega 
tion,  usually  stands  in  the  way  of  the  erection  of  any  con 
siderable  number  of  new  houses  for  Negro  tenants.  The 
creation  of  a  new  "Dark  Town"  is  always  bitterly  resented 
by  the  owners  of  neighboring  property,  improved  or  un 
improved. 

Segregation,  in  any  community  with  an  increasing  Negro 
population,  means  for  them  overcrowding  and  excessive  rents. 
In  Baltimore  houses  in  which  Negroes  could  lawfully  live, 
rented  at  much  higher  figures  than  similar  dwellings  in  which 
they  could  not.  Municipal  legislators  did  not  want  to  force 
the  Negroes  to  herd  together  or  to  pay  unfair  rents.  In  most 
cases,  it  never  occurred  to  them  that  what  they  were  doing 
would  have  such  results,  and  if  it  had,  they  would  seldom 
have  known  how  to  guard  against  the  dangers  involved. 
What  they  wanted  was  to  keep  the  Negroes  from  dwelling 
among  the  whites  except  as  servants.  That  end  seem  to 
them  both  desirable  and  fair,  and  they  were  determined  to 
take  the  shortest  cut  to  attain  it.  As  they  saw  it,  they  were 
entitled  to  protect  themselves  from  what  was  costly,  unsightly 
and  disagreeable.  If  in  so  doing,  the  Negro  suffered,  they 
were  sorry,  but  it  was  his  affair  rather  than  theirs.  Men  of 
one  race  or  class,  when  they  have  the  opportunity,  are  prone 
to  deal  with  those  of  others,  in  such  thoughtless,  and  if  you 
will,  heartless  fashion.  To  make  it  impossible  that  they  shall, 
is  not  the  least  of  the  purposes  for  which  constitutions  exist. 


RACE  SEGREGATION  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES  ' 

The  separation  of  the  two  races  in  their  religious  organ 
isations  is  entirely  voluntary  on  the  Negroes'  pact.  There  is 
no  formal  law  to  compel  it.  On  the  other  hand,  the  separa 
tion  of  the  two  races  in  the  schools  supported  by  public  tax 
ation  is  required  by  the  statutes  of  all  the  Southern  States. 

JFrom  article  by  Philip  Alexander  Bruce.  Hibbert  Journal.  13:867-86. 
July,  1915. 


284  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

To  each  people  are  assigned  school  buildings  of  their  own. 
No  black  pupils  are  admitted  to  the  school  buildings  of  the 
white;  and  the  reverse  is  enforced  with  equal  strictness.  But 
even  were  there  no  ordinances  prescribing  this  rigid  separation 
in  the  common  schools,  there  is  no  ground  for  thinking  that 
the  Negroes  desire  the  co-education  of  the  two  races ;  or  that 
they  resent,  in  the  slightest  degree,  its  legal  prohibition.  The 
fact  alone  that  all  the  teachers  in  the  black  schools  are  black 
would  be  sufficient  to  make  the  present  system  of  division  ac 
ceptable  to  persons  of  that  colour.  These  teachers  are  ob 
tained  from  the  most  influential  class  of  their  people;  they 
are  men  and  women  who  have  enjoyed  the  best  education 
now  in  the  reach  of  their  race;  and  who,  if  deprived  of  the 
opportunity  for  a  livelihood  afforded  by  the  common  school, 
would  find  themselves  compelled  to  turn  to  purely  manual  la 
bour.  They  are  fully  aware  that,  if  white  and  black  pupils 
are  permitted  to  be  instructed  in  the  same  school-houses,  the 
only  teachers  who  would  be  appointed  would  be  white.  Every 
practical  instinct,  therefore,  causes  them  to  sustain  the  policy 
of  separation  as  most  suitable  for  children  of  their  colour; 
and  as  most  advantageous  to  those  among  the  adults  who  are 
prepared  and  eager  to  follow  some  higher  calling. 

All  the  immediate  officers  of  the  schools  for  the  blacks 
are  black,  with  the  exception  of  the  general  superintendent, 
and  all  those  of  the  schools  for  the  whites  are  white,  with 
the  exception  of  the  janitors.  This  is  not  precisely  true  of 
the  higher  seats  of  learning  for  the  Negroes,  which  have 
steadily  increased  in  number  during  recent  years.  Some  of 
the  instructors  in  these  advanced  institutions  are  white,  but 
it  is  significant  that  they  have  invariably  been  appointed  to 
their  positions  from  the  Northern  States.  The  students, 
omitting  from  view  a  few  Indians,  are  all  black.  No  white 
students  are  to  be  found  among  them.  On  the  other  hand, 
no  Negro  students — above  all,  no  Negro  professors — are  ad 
mitted  to  any  of  the  academies,  colleges,  and  universities  be 
longing  to  the  white  people.  In  their  practical  working  the 
advanced  seats  of  learning  for  the  two  races  respectively  are 
as  completely  disconnected  as  their  religious  organisations. 
Unlike  their  common  schools,  the  higher  institutions  for  the 
Negroes  are  not  even  subject  to  the  particular  supervision  of 
a  white  city  or  county  superintendent,  or  to  the  general  oversight 


I  THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  285 

of  boards  composed  exclusively  of  white  persons.  In  short,  they 
are,  from  both  an  academic  and  a  political  point  of  view,  en 
tirely  independent. 

It  was  many  years  after  the  close  of  the  Civil  War  before 
ordinances  were  passed  requiring  the  separation  of  the  races 
on  all  lines  of  public  conveyance.  The  advantages  of  such  a 
policy  were  as  clearly  perceived  just  after  emancipation  as 
they  are  today;  but,  during  the  first  decades  succeeding  that 
event,  the  impoverishment  of  the  Southern  States,  resulting 
from  the  great  conflict  of  arms,  was  so  general  that  their 
railway  and  tramcar  companies  were  unable  to  bear  the  addi 
tional  expense  that  would  have  been  entailed  had  they  been 
compelled  to  provide  separate  accommodations.  This  fact, 
during  those  years,  discouraged  any  formal  legislation  on  the 
subject.  Moreover,  there  was  good  reason  to  anticipate  that 
the  Federal  Courts,  being  still  under  the  influence  of  the 
strong  feeling  aroused  by  the  Civil  War,  would  declare  such 
legislation  to  be  unconstitutional,  should  it  be  enacted. 

The  indiscriminate  commingling  of  white  and  black  persons 
in  the  same  public  conveyances,  was,  as  long  as  it  was  suffered, 
a  serious  drawback  to  the  use  of  those  conveyances  by  the  white 
people.  Not  only  were  the  Negroes,  during  those  years,  inclined 
to  be  actively  disagreeable,  owing  to  their  passions  having  been 
inflamed  against  their  former  masters  by  their  white  leaders 
from  the  North;  not  only  were  they  too  often  physically  offen 
sive,  even  when  correct  in  their  bearing;  but  all  were  prone  to 
indulge  in  liquor  to  excess,  which  frequently  led  them,  without 
provocation,  to  create  scenes  of  violent  disorder.  These  several 
weaknesses,  whether  displayed  separately  or  in  combination, 
were  objectional  enough  on  any  occasion  or  anywhere  when 
only  white  men  were  present;  but  in  public  conveyances  they 
were  doubly  so,  for  there  white  women  became  the  principal 
victims. 

With  the  appearance  of  the  first  generation  of  Negroes  born 
free,  that  feeling  of  toleration  among  the  whites  for  the  infirm 
ities  of  the  race  which  had  survived  the  Civil  War,  sensibly 
diminished;  and  this  fact  strengthened  their  desire  to  remove 
the  evils  that  sprang  from  the  personal  contact  of  whites  and 
blacks  while  traveling.  As  soon  as  the  South  had  become  once 
more  prosperous,  the  conviction  arose  that  it  would  no  longer 
be  a  hardship  to  require  the  transportation  companies  to  provide 


286  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

separate  accommodations  for  the  two  races.  On  all  the  steam 
railways  there  are  now  different  coaches  for  white  and  black 
passengers.  No  white  person  is  permitted  to  occupy  a  seat  in 
a  coach  assigned  to  Negroes;  no  Negro  is  permitted  to  occupy 
a  seat  in  a  coach  assigned  to  white  persons.  It  is  required  by 
law  that  there  shall  be  no  difference  whatever  in  the  comfort 
and  safety  of  the  cars  reserved  for  each  race.  On  more  than 
one  occasion  this  provision  for  separate  accommodation  has  been 
enforced  by  the  Federal  Courts,  who  under  the  influence  of  the 
change  in  the  national  temper,  now  decide  in  favour  of  the 
validity  of  such  a  law,  instead  of  deciding  the  reverse,  as  they 
would  have  done  twenty-five  years  ago. 

On  the  urban  tramways,  where  the  traffic  is  not  yet  suffi 
ciently  great  to  justify  the  use  of  separate  cars,  the  objections 
to  indiscriminate  commingling  are  met  in  part  by  reserving  one 
portion  of  each  car  for  black  persons  and  one  for  white;  and 
neither  are  permitted  to  take  possession  of  seats  assigned  to  the 
other.  Some  of  the  evils  of  the  old  system,  however,  survive, 
for  the  tramcars  not  infrequently  become,  in  the  late  night 
hours,  scenes  of  violence,  owing  to  the  aggressiveness  of  drunken 
Negroes  returning  to  their  homes.  In  time  the  law  which  re 
quires  separate  coaches  on  the  steam  railways  will  also  be  made 
to  apply  to  all  the  tramways. 

With  equal  strictness  the  separation  of  the  races  is  enforced 
in  all  places  of  public  amusement.  In  some  of  the  theatres, 
and  in  most  of  the  numerous  halls  for  picture  shows  operated 
for  the  diversion  of  the  whites,  no  provision  whatever  is  made 
for  a  black  audience;  or  such  provision  as  is  made  is  so  poor  in 
character  that  the  most  respectable  class  of  Negroes  feel  small 
temptation  to  attend  the  performance  there.  The  only  seats 
in  the  theaters  open  to  black  persons  are  situated  in  the  highest 
gallery,  the  furthest  removed  from  the  stage;  while  if  any  at  all 
are  reserved  in  the  halls  set  apart  for  the  largest  picture  shows, 
they  are  found  at  a  point  nearest  to  the  entrance  doors. 

In  a  measure  these  inferior  accommodations  are  justified 
by  the  general  indisposition  of  the  Negroes  of  all  ranks  to 
appear  under  the  same  roof  with  any  considerable  body  of  white 
people.  This  feeling,  so  far  as  places  of  public  diversion  are 
concerned,  is  encouraged  by  the  fact  that  in  all  the  towns  they 
now  possess  theaters  of  their  own,  and  also  halls  for  picture 
shows  and  assembly-rooms  for  dancing.  These  places  of  amuse- 


THE  NEGRO  PROBLEM  287 

ment  are  frequently  of  a  low  character,  owing  to  the  mixed 
company  patronising  them.  But  there  are  now  more  than  one 
Negro  theatre  where  neither  dissipation  nor  disorder  is  tolerated, 
and  where  the  performances  compare  very  favourably  in  their  set 
ting  at  least  with  those  to  be  observed  in  theaters  of  equal  size 
managed  and  patronized  by  white  people.  Ample  provision  is 
made  for  comfort  and  safety  in  the  construction  of  the  build 
ings;  and  quite  frequently  too  the  decorations  are  both  ornate 
and  artistic.  The  actors  and  actresses  are  always  black.  While 
the  race  has  shown  very  decided  vocal  and  instrumental  talent, 
it  has  not  yet  demonstrated  its  possession  of  any  histrionic 
ability  of  a  high  order.  The  picture  shows  being  wholly  me 
chanical,  and  the  films  used  by  the  white  managers  being  also 
purchasable  by  the  black,  this  form  of  entertainment  is  quite  as 
successful  in  the  halls  patronised  by  Negroes  as  in  those 
patronized  by  white  people.  In  all  the  places  of  amusement 
belonging  to  the  former  there  is  no  accommodation  whatever 
for  the  white  auditor  or  spectator.  So  far  as  white  persons 
are  considered  in  the  performances,  it  is  as  if  they  did  not 
exist  at  all.  No  white  face  is  seen  there,  unless  it  is  that  of  the 
policeman  assigned  nightly  to  the  spot  to  preserve  the  peace. 

But  undoubtedly  the  most  significant  aspect  of  race  segre 
gation  in  the  Southern  States  today  is  the  rigid  line  of  division 
which  has  been  drawn  in  all  the  important  cities  between  the 
residential  areas  occupied  by  the  white  and  black  populations 
respectively.  Down  to  a  recent  date,  no  measure,  whether  of 
state  or  municipal  origin,  had  been  adopted  to  raise  an  insur 
mountable  barrier  between  these  two  areas.  The  natural  dis 
position  of  the  two  races  was  to  establish  their  homes  apart. 
The  Negro  quarter  in  every  town  has  always  been  a  distinct 
community  in  itself,  without  even  a  white  sprinkling  among  its 
inhabitants,  beyond  the  few  grocers  and  mechanics  who  occupied 
small  stores  and  shops  here  and  there  within  its  boundaries. 
The  growth  of  the  black  population  in  numbers  gradually 
compelled  it,  in  all  the  cities,  to  spread  out;  and  this,  during 
many  years,  was  chiefly  accomplished  by  breaking  into  the 
contiguous  white  areas.  The  movement  usually  began  by  a 
single  black  family  purchasing  a  house  in  the  first  adjacent 
white  block.  Its  presence  at  once  created  a  desire  among  most 
of  the  white  occupants  of  that  block  to  leave  their  homes,  par 
ticularly  if  these  homes  were  held  under  lease.  The  vacancies 


288  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

were  soon  filled  by  Negro  families,  until,  in  a  short  time,  a 
block  that  had  been  inhabited  by  white  persons  only  was  taken 
possession  of  perhaps  entirely  by  black.  So  seriously  was  the 
value  of  such  property  depreciated  by  invasions  of  this  kind 
that  an  ordinance  has  now  been  adopted  by  all  the  large  Southern 
cities  to  the  effect  that  hereafter  no  additional  Negro  house 
holder  is  to  be  permitted  to  take  up  his  residence  in  any  block 
of  which  at  least  two-thirds  of  the  inhabitants  are  white;  and 
the  converse  is  also  enforced — no  new  white  householder  is  to 
be  permitted  to  occupy  a  home  in  a  block  of  which  at  least  two- 
thirds  of  the  inhabitants  are  black.  By  this  regulation  the 
present  status  of  every  residential  block  in  each  city  has  become 
permanently  fixed;  the  white  people  are  prevented  from  en 
croaching  on  the  black  areas;  the  Negroes  from  encroaching  on 
the  white. 

The  practical  working  of  this  ordinance  would  not  only  be 
a  menace  to  public  health,  but  also  impose  a  serious  hardship 
on  the  black  population,  but  for  the  fact  that  the  quarter  which 
that  population  occupies  in  every  town  lies  near  or  on  its  out 
skirts  ;  for  this,  by  permitting  of  an  indefinite  expansion  in 
the  adjacent  country  districts,  prevents  an  unsanitary  over 
crowding,  and  it  also  holds  down  the  values  of  real  estate  in 
new  areas  belonging  to  the  race  by  constantly  bringing  new 
areas  into  competition  with  them.  The  primary  effect  of  the 
law  in  the  city  is  to  concentrate  the  entire  Negro  population  by 
permanently  confining  it  to  a  definite  locality  of  its  own.  A 
secondary  effect  is  that,  by  further  diminishing  the  number  of 
irritating  points  of  contact  between  the  two  peoples,  it,  to  that 
extent,  distinctly  promotes  peace  in  their  relations.  Since  the 
provision  is  as  strictly  enforced  against  the  white  as  against 
the  blacks,  no  objection  on  the  score  of  discrimination  can  be 
raised  against  it;  so  far,  indeed,  the  blacks  have  acquiesced  in 
it  as  quietly  as  the  whites. 

The  ordinances  requiring  the  confinement  of  each  race  to 
its  own  residential  area  have  so  far  been  of  municipal  origin 
only,  they  apply  to  the  cities  alone.  No  Southern  State  has 
yet  passed  a  law  which  provides  for  segregation,  not  only  in 
the  urban  districts,  but  also  in  the  rural.  The  separation  of 
the  two  peoples  in  the  schools  and  public  conveyances  has,  as 
we  have  seen,  been  enforced  by  legislative  enactments  which 
operate  throughout  the  whole  extent  of  each  State.  They 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  289 

apply  to  the  town  and  country  alike,  since  their  scope  is  general 
But  residential  segregation  is  a  local  regulation  in  every  in 
stance  of  its  adoption,  simply  because  it  can  only  be  carried 
into  effect  where  the  two  populations  are  already  dense.  So 
far  this  has  been  practicable  in  the  Southern  cities  alone, 
where,  as  I  have  already  pointed  out,  the  Negroes  have  always 
been  more  or  less  confined  to  their  own  quarter.  It  is  not  a 
difficult  undertaking  to  enforce  a  segregation  law  applicable 
to  both  the  white  and  black  inhabitants  of  the  towns,  for  its 
object  is  not  to  create  a  new  condition,  but  rather  to  make 
permanent  a  condition  that  already  exists.  While  some  of  the 
Southern  States  contain  more  black  people  than  white,  and 
while  too  the  proportion  in  some  of  the  counties  in  favour  of 
the  former  is  as  three  to  one,  still  the  rural  whites  and  blacks 
are  in  general  not  very  thickly  settled  over  the  face  of  the 
country.  It  would  be  practically  impossible,  even  were  it  hu 
mane  and  in  harmony  with  a  sound  economic  policy,  to  com 
pel  all  the  Negroes  of  the  rural  districts  to  group  themselves 
iri  separate  communities,  for  they  would,  in  most  cases,  have 
to  be  uprooted  to  their  heavy  loss ;  and  this  would  also  be 
true  of  the  rural  whites,  were  the  law  also  made  applicable 
to  them.  Apart  from  individual  hardships,  it  would,  in  the 
present  age  at  least,  disturb  the  whole  system  of  agricultural 
production  and,  in  doing  so,  inflict  far  more  damage  than  it 
would  accomplish  good  from  a  purely  .social  point  of  view. 

To  a  certain  degree,  however,  racial  influences  are  at 
work  in  the  rural  districts  to  bring  about,  there  also,  a  modi 
fied  form  of  residential  segregation.  There  is  a  natural  ten 
dency  in  all  the  large  black  communities  in  the  country  to 
grow  by  accessions  from  without  as  well  as  from  within ; 
while  many  of  the  Negroes  who  are  seated  here  and  there  as 
isolated  families  show  a  disposition  to  drift  together  into  a 
loose  grouping,  which  gradually  assumes  the  character  of  a 
more  or  less  compact  village,  or  a  long  chain  of  farm-houses, 
if  the  site  is  one  of  those  ridges  of  poor  soil  which  lie  back 
of  so  many  of  the  Southern  streams.  The  rural  blacks  are 
eager  to  acquire  land,  and,  as  it  is  still  cheap  and  can  be  pur 
chased  on  favourable  terms  as  to  time,  they  have,  in  many 
places,  come  into  possession  of  extensive  areas  of  ground 
adapted  to  the  production  of  the  staple  crops  of  cotton  and 
tobacco. 


2QO  SELECTED  ARTICLES 

With  the  black  population's  ever-increasing  tendency  to 
form  large  and  closely  knit  communities  of  their  own  in  city 
and  country  alike,  every  branch  of  business  that  supplies 
their  numerous  wants  is  falling  more  and  more  into  the  hands 
of  enterprising  individuals  of  their  own  race.  Even  now  the 
greater  proportion  of  their  patronage  in  the  towns  is  con 
ferred  upon  shops  established  and  controlled  by  persons  of 
their  own  colour.  All  their  restaurants  are  managed  by 
such  persons.  No  white  man  or  woman  is  ever  seen  taking  a 
meal  in  these  eating-houses,  just  as  no  black  man  or  woman 
is  ever  observed  taking  a  meal  in  the  eating-houses  of  the 
white  people.  At  every  fourth  or  fifth  crossing  on  the  most 
crowded  streets  of  the  Negro  quarter,  a  chemist's  or  drug 
gist's  shop  is  found  under  the  exclusive  direction  of  black 
pharmacists,  who  look  to  their  own  race  for  their  only  prof 
its.  A  like  patronage  sustains  a  large  number  of  tailors', 
haberdashers',  and  shoemakers'  shops.  The  blacks  are  also 
their  own  milliners,  clothiers,  and  drapers.  All  their  under 
takers  are  persons  of  their  own  colour;  no  white  undertaker 
can  count  a  single  Negro  family  among  his  customers.  All 
their  barbers  are  black.  Only  a  few  years  ago  the  barber 
shops  for  the  whites  in  every  Southern  City  were  occupied 
by  Negroes  alone,  who  were  generally  noted  for  their  intelli 
gence  and  polished  manners,  as  well  as  for  their  skill  in  then 
trade.  With  few  exceptions,  they  have  been  driven  away 
from  even  their  oldest  stands  by  Italian  and  Northern  rivals ; 
and,  in  order  to  earn  a  livelihood,  have  been  compelled  to  re 
establish  themselves  in  the  black  quarter,  where  their  profits 
are  smaller  and  more  precarious.  The  Negro  bootblacks  have 
also  gone  down  before  a  similar  competition,  and  are  rarely 
seen  as  formerly  in  places  where  white  people  congregate. 
They  too  have  taken  refuge  in  the  black  quarter. 

What  is  true  of  business  life  is  also  true  of  the  profes 
sions.  In  all  the  Southern  cities  there  are  now  many  Negro 
lawyers  whose  clientele  is  confined  to  persons  of  their  own 
race.  Almost  the  entire  practice  involving  the  interests  of 
that  race  in  the  magistrates'  courts  is  in  their  possession ;  and 
also  the  like  practice  in  the  probate  and  chancery  courts;  but 
in  cases  originating  in,  or  appealed  to,  the  higher  tribunals 
they  are  generally  found  associated  with  white  members  of 
the  bar.  The  bulk  of  the  office  business  for  the  blacks  is  also 
in  their  hands. 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  291 

From  the  preceding  paragraphs  it  will  be  perceived  that 
the  Negroes  of  the  Southern  States,  in  their  religious  organ 
isations,  in  their  schools,  in  their  residential  areas,  in  places 
of  amusement,  in  public  conveyances,  and  finally  in  business 
and  in  the  professions,  stand  almost  as  much  apart  from  the 
white  people  as  if  they  made  up  a  community  occupying  a 
different  country. 


CONDITIONS  AMONG  NEGROES  IN  THE 
CITIES  1 

Migration  to  the  city  is  being  followed  by  segregation  into 
districts  and  neighborhoods  within  the  city.  In  Northern  cities 
years  ago  Negro  residents,  for  the  most  part,  lived  where  their 
purses  allowed.  With  the  influx  of  thousands  of  immigrants 
from  the  South  and  the  West  Indies,  both  native  Negro  and 
newcomer  have  been  lumped  together  into  distinct  neighbor 
hoods.  In  Southern  cities  domestic  servants  usually  still  live 
upon  the  premises  of  their  employers  or  near  by.  But  the 
growing  Negro  business  and  professional  classes  and  those 
engaged  in  other  than  domestic  and  personal  service  find  sep 
arate  sections  in  which  to  dwell.  Thus  the  Negro  ghetto  is 
growing  up.  New  York  has  its  "San  Juan  Hill"  in  the  West 
Sixties,  and  its  Harlem  district  of  over  35,000  within  about 
eighteen  city  blocks;  Philadelphia  has  its  Seventh  Ward;  Chi 
cago  has  its  State  Street;  Washington  its  North  West  Neigh 
borhood,  and  Baltimore  its  Druid  Hill  Avenue ;  Louisville  has 
its  Chestnut  Street  and  its  "Smoketown" ;  Atlanta  its  West 
End  and  Auburn  Avenue.  These  are  examples  taken  at  ran 
dom  which  are  typical  of  cities,  large  and  small,  North  and 
South. 

This  segregation  within  the  city  is  caused  by  strong  forces 
at  work  both  within  and  without  the  body  of  the  Negroes 
themselves.  Naturally,  Negroes  desire  to  be  together.  The  con 
sciousness  of  kind  in  racial,  family  and  friendly  ties  binds  them 
closer  to  one  another  than  to  their  white  fellow-citizens.  But 
as  Negroes  develop  in  intelligence,  in  their  standard  of  living 
and  economic  power,  they  desire  better  houses,  better  public 

1  From  article  by  George  Edmund  Haynes,  Ph.D.,  Director,  National 
League  on  Urban  Conditions  Among  Negroes;  Professor  of  Social  Science, 
Fisk  University,  Nashville,  Tenn.  Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  49: 
105-19.  September,  1913. 


292  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

facilities  and  other  conveniences  not  usually  obtainable  in  the 
sections  allotted  to  their  less  fortunate  black  brothers.  To 
obtain  these  advantages  they  seek  other  neighborhoods,  just 
as  the  European  immigrants  who  are  crowded  into  segregated 
sections  of  our  cities  seek  better  surroundings  when  they  are 
economically  able  to  secure  them. 

But  a  prejudiced  opposition  from  his  prospective  white  neigh 
bors  confronts  the  Negro,  which  does  not  meet  the  immigrant 
who  has  shuffled  off  the  coil  of  his  Continental  condition. 
Intelligence  and  culture  do  not  often  discount  color  of  skin. 
Professions  of  democratic  justice  in  the  North,  and  deeds  of 
individual  kindness  in  the  South,  have  not  yet  secured  to  Negroes 
the  unmolested  residence  in  blocks  with  white  fellow-citizens. 
In  Northern  cities  where  larger  liberty  in  some  avenues  obtains, 
the  home  life,  the  church  life  and  much  of  the  business  and 
community  life  of  Negroes  are  carried  on  separately  and  apart 
from  the  common  life  of  the  whole  people.  In  Southern  com 
munities,  with  separate  street-car  laws,  separate  places  of  amuse 
ment  and  recreation,  separate  hospitals  and  separate  cemeteries, 
there  is  sharp  cleavage  between  whites  and  Negroes,  living  and 
dead.  With  separation  in  neighborhoods,  in  work,  in  churches, 
in  homes  and  in  almost  every  phase  of  their  life,  there  is 
growing  up  in  the  cities  of  America  a  distinct  Negro  world, 
isolated  from  many  of  the  impulses  of  the  common  life  and 
little  known  and  understood  by  the  white  world  about  it. 

In  the  midst  of  this  migration  and  segregation,  the  Negro  is 
trying  to  make  a  three-fold  adjustment,  each  phase  of  which 
requires  heroic  struggle.  First,  there  is  the  adjustment  that  all 
rural  populations  have  to  make  in  learning  to  live  in  town. 
Adjustment  to  conditions  of  housing,  employment,  amusement, 
etc.,  is  necessary  for  all  who  make  the  change  from  country  to 
city.  The  Negro  must  make  a  second  adjustment  from  the 
status  of  a  chattel  to  that  of  free  contract,  from  servitude  to 
citizenship.  He  has  to  realize  in  his  own  consciousness  the 
self-confidence  of  a  free  man.  Finally,  the  Negro  must  adjust 
himself  to  the  white  population  in  the  cities,  and  it  is  no  exag 
geration  of  the  facts  to  say  that  generally  today  the  attitude  of 
this  white  population  is  either  indifferent  or  prejudiced  or  both. 

Now,  the  outcome  of  segregation  in  such  a  serious  situation 
is  first  of  all  to  create  an  attitude  of  suspicion  and  hostility 
between  the  best  elements  of  the  two  races.  Too  much  of  the 


THE   NEGRO   PROBLEM  293 

Negro's  knowledge  of  the  white  world  comes  through  dema 
gogues,  commercial  sharks,  yellow  journalism  and  those  "citi 
zens"  who  compose  the  mobs,  while  too  much  of  the  white 
man's  knowledge  01  the  Negro  people  ib  derived  Irom  similar 
sources,  from  domestic  servants  and  from  superficial  obser 
vation  of  the  loafers  about  the  streets.  The  best  elements  of 
both  races,  thus  entirely  removed  from  friendly  contact,  except 
for  the  chance  meeting  of  individuals  in  the  market  place, 
know  hardly  anything  of  their  common  life  and  tend  to  become 
more  suspicious  and  hostile  toward  each  other  than  toward 
strangers  from  a  far  country. 

The  white  community  is  thus  frequently  led  to  unjust  judg 
ments  of  Negroes  and  Negro  neighborhoods,  as  seen  in  the 
soubriquets  of  "little  Africa,"  "black  bottom,"  "Niggertown," 
"Smoketown,"  "Buzzard's  Alley,"  "Chinch-row,"  and  as  indicated 
by  the  fact  that  the  individuals  and  families  who  live  in  these 
neighborhoods  are  all  lumped  by  popular  opinion  into  one  class. 
Only  here  and  there  does  a  white  person  come  to  know  that 
"there  are  Negroes  and  Negroes  just  as  there  are  white  folks  and 
white  folks."  The  most  serious  side  of  this  attitude  and 
opinion  is,  that  the  Negro  is  handicapped  by  them  in  securing 
the  very  things  that  would  help  him  in  working  out  his  own 
salvation. 

In  the  matter  of  the  housing  conditions  under  which  he  must 
live,  reliable  investigations  have  shown  that  in  several  cities 
the  "red-light"  districts  of  white  people  are  either  in  the  midst 
of,  or  border  closely  upon  Negro  neighborhoods.  Also  respect 
able  Negroes  often  find  it  impossible  to  free  themselves  from 
disreputable  and  vicious  neighbors  of  their  own  race,  because 
the  localities  in  which  both  may  live  are  limited.  And  on  top 
of  this,  Negroes  often  pay  higher  rentals  for  accommodations 
similar  to  those  of  white  tenants,  and,  frequently,  improved 
houses  are  secured  only  when  white  people  who  occupied  them 
have  moved  on  to  something  better.  In  Southern  cities,  many 
of  the  abler  classes  of  Negroes  have  escaped  the  environment 
of  the  vicious  element  by  creating  decent  neighborhoods  through 
home  ownership,  and  by  eternal  vigilance,  excluding  saloons, 
gambling  places  or  other  degrading  agencies.  For  the  poorer 
and  less  thrifty  element,  in  a  number  of  towns  and  cities,  loose 
building  regulations  allow  greedy  landlords  to  profit  by  "gun- 
barrel"  shanties  and  cottages,  by  "arks,"  of  which  the  typical 


294  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

pigeon-house  would  be  a  construction  model,  and  by  small 
houses  crowded  upon  the  same  lot,  often  facing  front  street, 
side  street  and  the  alley,  with  lack  of  sewerage  and  with  other 
sanitary  neglect,  which  an  inspector  of  one  Southern  city  de 
scribed  as  "a  crying  disgrace  to  any  civilized  people." 

Yet,  in  the  face  of  these  handicaps,  thousands  of  homes  that 
would  do  credit  to  any  people  on  earth  are  springing  up  in  these 
cities.  In  ^he  absence  or  with  the  indifference  of  sanitary 
authorities,  intelligent  Negroes  are  not  only  struggling  to  free 
themselves  from  disease-breeding  surroundings,  but  they  are 
teaching  the  unintelligent  throng.  In  spite  of  spontaneous 
schemes  of  real  estate  owners  and  agents  to  keep  them  out  of 
desirable  neighborhoods,  in  spite  of  the  deliberate  designs  of 
city  segregation  ordinances  such  as  have  been  passed  in  several 
cities  and  attempted  in  others,  in  spite  of  intimidation,  the  abler 
Negroes  in  some  cities  are  buying  homes  and  creating  decent 
neighborhoods  in  which  to  live.  However,  the  larger  propor 
tion  are  rent  payers  and  not  owners,  hence  they  need  intelligent 
leadership  and  influential  support  in  their  efforts  for  improved 
housing  and  neighborhood  conditions. 


GUNPOWDER    OF    RACE    ANTAGONISM1 

Take  the  housing  situation:  The  Negro  who  lives  in  pover 
ty  usually  gets  the  worst  deal  the  city  has  to  give.  If  he 
leaves  the  alley  and  the  slum,  as  he  has  in  New  York,  it  is 
thru  a  series  of  fortuitous  happenings  plus  the  farsightedness 
of  his  own  real  estate  dealers  and  his  indomitable  grit.  It  is 
not  pleasant  for  colored  people  to  break  into  a  new  neighbor 
hood;  if  they  are  not  bombed,  they  are  often  insulted  and 
are  subjected  to  much  petty  attack.  They  are  also  subject  to 
the  sharpest  of  sharp  dealing  on  the  part  of  real  estate  inter 
ests,  and  on  entering  a  new  home  are  always  charged  more 
than  the  former  white  tenants.  This  practice  makes  them 
skeptical  regarding  the  loss  in  real  estate  values  of  which 
they  so  frequently  hear.  They  themselves  suffer  chiefly  from 
the  utter  disregard  of  the  owner  of  Negro  property  to  the 

1  From  article  by  Mary  White  Ovington,  Chairman,  National  Asso 
ciation  for  the  Advancement  of  Colored  People.  American  City.  21:248-51. 
September,  1919- 


THE  NEGRO   PROBLEM  295 

character  of  his  tenants.  While  in  a  white  neighborhood  the 
landlord  often  shows  a  desire  to  keep  up  the  standard  of 
respectability  of  his  block  and  turns  down  the  criminal,  in  a 
Negro  neighborhood  whoever  pays  the  highest  rent  gets  in. 
Thus  we  have  bootlegger  and  street  walker  living  in  an  apart 
ment  with  law-abiding,  self-respecting  Negro  families.  New 
York's  colored  neighborhood  in  Harlem,  of  150,000  residents, 
contains  within  its  few  blocks  the  best  but  also  the  most 
criminally  inclined  Negroes  in  the  world.  Under  these  cir 
cumstances,  colored  Darents  are  continually  endeavoring  to 
get  into  a  new  place  where  viciousness  is  not  permitted  to 
show  itself.  They  invade  white  blocks.  In  all  our  large  ci 
ties,  north  and  south,  there  are  many  colored  homes  scattered 
among  the  whites  where  the  two  races  live  in  peace  and  us 
ually  in  amity.  But  where  the  population  is  large,  the  better 
Negro  element,  as  it  surges  forward  entering  a  new  area  in 
considerable  numbers,  causes  race  friction  and  sometimes  al 
most  a  panic. 

Probably  little  can  be  done  to  stabilize  real  estate  values 
when  a  neighborhood  once  loses  its  exclusive  character.  Good 
old  residential  sections  in  every  great  city  have  gone  their 
way.  Many  an  old  mansion  has  seen  in  its  turn  the  Irish, 
the  German,  the  Italian,  the  Russian  Jew,  the  Negro.  So 
long  as  America  spells  opportunity,  we  shall  see  these  inva 
sions,  the  old  families  moving  to  newer  and  more  attractive 
districts,  the  old  homes  occupied  by  foreigners  or  by  colored 
families.  To  prevent  this,  some  southern  cities  tried  segrega 
tion  by  municipal  ordinance,  until  the  Supreme  Court  of  the 
United  States  declared  such  an  ordinance  unconstitutional. 
Even  now  we  have  the  same  thing  attempted  despite  the  deci 
sion  of  the  courts.  Recently  in  Oklahoma  City  the  Negroes 
have  been  clamoring  for  a  hospital,  and  were  on  the  point  of 
obtaining  one  when  the  city  officials  voted  the  appropriation 
down,  on  the  ground  that  Negroes  had  attacked  a  municipal 
segregation  ordinance  and  that  until  they  accepted  segrega 
tion  nothing  would  be  done  for  them.  The  Negroes,  on  the 
other  hand,  replied  that  they  would  not  permanently  remain 
in  their  present  unhealthy  quarter  by  the  creeks  and  mudholes, 
but  that  they  intended  to  live  in  a  healthier  part  of  the  city. 
The  matter  has  not  yet  come  to  a  decision,  both  sides  holding 


296  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

out,  but  it  shows  that  segregation  ordinances  are  for  the  bene 
fit  of  those  who  pass  them,  and  that  Americans,  black  or 
white,  mean  to  recognize  no  limit  to  the  possibility  of  better 
ing  their  housing  conditions  save  that  of  their  pocketbooks. 

An  interesting  experiment  has  been  made  in  Cincinnati 
that  should  be  worth  following  in  other  cities.  A  small  com 
munity  settlement,  occupying  seven  acres,  was  opened  up  for 
Negroes  in  1914  to  Mr.  J.  G.  Schmidlapp.  It  is  in  a  beauti 
ful  wooded  section  of  the  city,  and  is  built  along  the  best 
lines  of  modern  apartment-house  construction.  On  a  modest 
scale  it  resembles  the  Forest  Hills  experiment  of  the  Russell 
Sage  Foundation.  Small  Negro  sections  such  as  this,  health-, 
fully  situated,  would  relieve  the  tension.  The  colored  man 
usually  gets  second  best,  with  an  anathema  from  his  new 
white  neighbors.  That  the  situation  is  a  complicated  one  is 
only  too  apparent,  and  its  very  difficulty  shows  that  it  should 
no  longer  be  left  wholly  to  the  dealer  in  real  estate. 


MY  VIEW  OF  SEGREGATION  LAWS  1 

White  people  who  argue  for  the  segregation  of  the  masses 
of  black  people  forget  the  tremendous  power  of  objective 
teaching.  To  hedge  any  set  of  people  off  in  a  corner  and 
sally  among  them  now  and  then  with  a  lecture  or  a  sermon 
is  merely  to  add  misery  to  degradation.  But  put  the  black 
man  where  day  by  day  he  sees  how  the  white  man  keeps  his 
lawns,  his  windows;  how  he  treats  his  wife  and  children,  and 
you  will  do  more  real  helpful  teaching  than  a  whole  library  of 
lectures  and  sermons.  Moreover,  this  will  help  the  white 
man.  If  he  knows  that  his  life  is  to  be  taken  as  a  model, 
that  his  hours,  dress,  manners,  are  all  to  be  patterns  for 
someone  less  fortunate,  he  will  deport  himself  better  than  he 
would  otherwise.  Practically  all  the  real  moral  uplift  the 
black  people  have  got  from  the  whites — and  this  has  been 
great  indeed — has  come  from  this  observation  of  the  white 
man's  conduct.  The  South  today  is  still  full  of  the  type  of 
Negro  with  gentle  manners.  Where  did  he  get  them?  From 
some  master  or  mistress  of  the  same  type. 

1  From  article  by  Booker  T.  Washington.  New  Republic.  5:113-14- 
December  4,  1915- 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  297 

Summarizing  the  matter  in  the  large,  segregation  is  ill- 
advised  because 

1.  It  is  unjust. 

2.  It   invites   other  unjust  measures. 

3.  It    will    not    be    productive    of    good,    because   practically 
every  thoughtful   Negro    resents   its    injustice    and    doubts    its 
sincerity.     Any  race  adjustment  based  on  injustice  finally  de 
feats   itself.     The   Civil   War  is  the  best  illustration   of  what 
results   where   it   is   attempted   to   make  wrong   right   or   seem 
to  be  right. 

4.  It  is  unnecessary. 

5.  It  is  inconsistent.     The    Negro    is    segregated    from    his 
white  neighbor,   but    white    business    men    are    not    prevented 
f^rom  doing  business  in  Negro  neighborhoods. 

6.  There  has  been   no  case   of   segregation   of   Negroes  in 
the   United   States   that   has   not   widened   the  breach  between 
the  two  races.     Wherever  a  form  of  segregation  exists  it  will 
be  found  that  it  has  been  administered  in  such  a  way  as  to 
embitter   the   Negro   and   harm   more   or   less   the   moral   fibre 
of  the  white  man.     That    the    Negro    does    not    express    this 
constant  sense  of  wrong  is  no  proof  that  he  does  not  feel  it. 

Finally,  as  I  have  said  in  another  place,  as  white  and 
black  learn  daily  to  adjust,  in  a  spirit  of  justice  and  fair  play, 
those  interests  which  are  individual  and  racial,  and  to  see 
and  feel  the  importance  of  those  fundamental  interests  which 
are  common,  so  will  both  races  grow  and  prosper.  In  the 
long  run  no  individual  and  no  race  can  succeed  which  sets 
itself  at  war  against  the  common  good;  for  "in  the  gain  or 
loss  of  one  race,  all  the  rest  have  equal  claim." 


RURAL    LAND     SEGREGATION    BETWEEN 
WHITES  AND  NEGROES  1 

The  proposition  looks  rather  to  white  segregation  than 
Negro  segregation,  providing  only  that  where  Negroes  cease 
to  become  laborers  or  renters,  and  become  independent  land 
owners  working  for  themselves,  they  should  buy  land  in  com- 

1  From  article  by  Clarence  Poe,  Editor  of  the  Progressive  Farmer. 
South  Atlantic  Quarterly.  13:207-12.  July,  1914- 


\ 


2g8  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

munities    to    themselves — or    at    least    apart    from    those    com 
munities  which  are,  and  wish  to  remain,  predominantly  white. 
Seven  reasons  I  have  given  for  favoring  the  plan  may  also 
be   briefly   repeated: 

1.  Because  it   is   necessary  to   give  our  white    farmers  and 
their  families  a  satisfying  social  life. 

2.  Because   it   will   insure   them   greater   safety  and   protec 
tion. 

3.  Because  it  will  give  both   races  better  schools,  churches, 
and  all  the  agencies  of  a  richer  community  life. 

4.  Because  it  will  open  the  way  to  both  races  for  rural  co 
operation    and    cooperative    enterprises — work    in    which    it    is 
almost  impossible  for  whites  and  blacks  to  work  together  suc 
cessfully. 

5.  Because  it  will  improve    moral    conditions    in    the    rela 
tions  of  the  races. 

6.  Because  it  will  give  the  rural  South  what  it  most  sorely 
needs — a   greater  proportion  of   white  people,    (i)    by  stopping 
the   crowding  out   of   the  white   farmers  by  Negroes,   and    (2) 
by  providing  all-white  communities  such  as  white  people   from 
other  sections  will  be  willing  to  move  into. 

7.  Because  ambitious  young  white  men  will  then  be  willing 
to   go    into   these    all-white   communities   as    tenants,   work   and 
save,  and   become  good    farmers    and    good    citizens,    whereas 
they   are    unwilling    to    go    into    mixed    communities    and    com 
pete  with   Negro  tenants. 

As  to  the  question  why  a  law  is  needed,  instead  of  leaving 
the  whole  matter  to  be  settled  by  public  opinion,  that  is  also 
quickly  answered.  We  need  a  law  (i)  so  as  to  let  each  race 
know  definitely  its  own  bounds  and  therefore  better  respect 
the  rights  of  the  other  race;  and  (2)  to  protect  white  com 
munities  from  the  white  landlord  who  lives  away  from  the 
community  and  doesn't  care  how  many  Negroes  he  sells  land 
to — simply  because  he  doesn't  have  to  live  among  them  him 
self  and  doesn't  care  about  anybody  else's  condition. 

The  chief  point  at  which  I  have  been  misunderstood  and 
the  chief  point  at  which  Mr.  Stephenson  misunderstands  me 
is  in  my  attitude  toward  the  Negro — the  motive  of  this  land 
segregation  movement.  I  hope  I  shall  never  be  classed  with 
the  bitter  or  destructive  type  of  "Negro  agitators."  My 
whole  aim  in  this  matter  has  been  to  develop  a  constructive 
policy  for  the  help  of  the  white  man  and  not  a  destructive 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  299 

policy  to  the  hurt  of  the  Negro.  If  I  know  my  own  heart 
I  would  not  be  unjust  to  the  Negro.  For  the  Shylocks  and 
vultures  of  our  own  race  who  fatten  financially  upon  his  ig 
norance  and  weakness  I  have  nothing  but  the  utmost  contempt 
and  loathing.  For  all  who  would  oppress  him  and  keep  him 
in  peonage  I  have  no  shadow  of  sympathy.  I  believe  in  help 
ing  the  Negro  and  in  being  just  to  him. 

But — and  here  comes  the  rub — I  also  believe  in  helping  and 
being  just  to  the  working  white  man  of  the  South  whose  an 
cestors  through  centuries  of  toil  wrought  out  the  civilization 
which  we  enjoy — the  civilization,  moreover,  to  which  the  Ne 
gro  himself  owes  the  very  peace,  safety  and  prosperity  he 
enjoys.  And  years  of  earnest  study  have  convinced  me  that 
all  in  all  the  handicapped  man,  the  disadvantaged  man,  in  the 
rural  South  today  is  not  the  Negro,  but  the  laboring  white 
man  who  must  compete  industrially  with  a  race  with  lower 
living  standards  and  whose  white  social  life  is  impoverished 
if  not  imperilled  by  the  universal  sandwiching  of  white  and 
Negro  homes.  This  is  the  situation  that  confronts  us.  The 
Negroes  not  only  have  an  advantage  over  the  white  farmer 
in  that  they  are  able  to  buy  land  and  make  crops  on  a  scale 
of  living,  clothing,  and  housing  that  the  respectable  white 
farmer  and  his  family  cannot  meet,  but  the  Negroes  have  the 
additional  advantage  that  where  Negroes  begin  to  outnumber 
the  whites,  or  are  of  bad  character,  the  whites  may  be  forced 
to  surrender  the  whole  community  to  the  Negroes  because 
there  is  no  longer  an  adequate  white  social  life  or  else  for 
reasons  of  safety.  This  has  happened  in  thousands  of  cases. 

Let  us  consider  conditions  briefly.  Booker  Washington 
himself  boasts  that  in  every  southern  state  east  of  the  Mis 
sissippi,  except  Florida,  the  percentage  of  Negroes  on  the 
farms  is  increasing:  the  Negroes  are  gaining  on  the  whites 
proportionately  and  rural  districts  are  becoming  blacker  in 
stead  of  whiter.  Moreover,  not  only  are  the  rural  sections 
of  the  South  getting  blacker  instead  of  whiter  but  the  Ne 
groes  are  gaining  most  rapidly  in  farm  ownership,  17  per  cent 
gain  in  Negro  ownership  to  12  per  cent  in  white,  while— most 
sinister  fact  of  all— it  is  the  white  farmers  who  are  fastest 
becoming  a  tenant  class  (one  hundred  eighty-eight  thousand  gain 
in  white  tenants  or  27  per  cent  and  only  one  hundred  eighteen 
thousand  gain  in  Negro  tenants  or  21  per  cent). 

Now,  if  the  Negroes  were  gaining  this  advantage  by  virtue 


300  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

of  a  superior  character  and  civilization,  we  should  have  no 
word  of  protest.  But  they  are  not.  They  are  gaining  chiefly 
because  they  are  nearer  the  savage  stage  of  man's  develop 
ment — because  they  will  live  in  shabbier  houses,  eat  meaner 
food,  wear  dirtier  clothes,  than  men  will  do  among  whom  the 
living  standards  and  their  undesirability  as  neighbors:  would 
because  new  Negro  landowners  crowd  in  among  white  farm 
families  in  districts  without  police  protection,  and  thus  fre 
quently  force  these  white  farmers  to  move  away.  It's  an  un 
fair  advantage — that  is,  if  we  assume  that  the  white  man  has 
a  right  to  protect  his  civilization — and  I  say  that  simply  as  a 
matter  of  fairness  to  the  white  man  and  not  of  unfairness  to 
the  Negro,  the  best  thought  of  the  South  should  be  given  to 
working  out  a  remedy.  We  should  give  a  reasonable  propor- 
iton  of  rural  white  communities,  communities  owned  by  our 
white  farmers  and  their  families,  the  right  to  segregate  them 
selves,  the  right  to  say  (under  reasonable  restrictions)  that 
no  more  land  in  such  communities  should  be  sold  to  Negroes 
— or  else  some  other  solution  must  be  found. 

When  our  recent  Southern  Sociological  Congress  in  Nash 
ville  had  speaker  after  speaker  benevolently  discussing  "Hind 
rances  to  Negro  Progress"  while  no  man  said  a  word  about 
"Hindrances  to  White  Progress,"  I  could  not  help  but  think 
this :  Suppose  a  million  Chinese  or  Japanese  had  come  into 
California,  and  they  were  gaining  on  the  whites  in  every 
farming  county,  running  the  white  farmers  out  by  their  lower 
living  standards  and  their  undesirability  as  neighbors;  would 
you  have  a  white  Californians'  conference  discussing  "Hind 
rances  to  the  Yellow  Man's  Progress?"  Or  would  they  be 
looking  after  the  preservation  of  their  own  white  civilization, 
as  they  have  shown  themselves  so  abundantly  able  to  do? 

The  only  man  in  the  South  today  whose  civilization  and 
whose  future  are  really  imperilled — mark  my  words — is  the 
small  white  farmer  and  white  workingman. 


THE  PRESIDENT  AND  THE  SEGREGATION  AT 
WASHINGTON  l 

Careful   inquiry  by  a  representative  of  the   National   Asso 
ciation  for  the  Advancement  of  Colored  People,  and  by  news- 

1  From   article    by   Oswald   Garrison   Villard.     North   American   Review. 
198:800-7.     December,    1913. 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  301 

paper  men  of  the  standing  of  Washington  correspondents  of  the 
New  York  Evening  Post  and  Boston  Advertiser,  has  developed 
the  fact  that  segregation  of  colored  employees  exists  and  is 
increasing,  especially  in  the  Bureau  of  Engraving  and  Printing, 
in  the  Post-Office  Department,  and  in  the  office  of  the  Auditor 
for  the  Post-Office,  which  is  a  part  of  the  Treasury  Department, 
and  that  it  has  begun  in  the  Washington  city  post-office.  As 
yet,  segregation  has  not  been  introduced  in  the  Treasury  Build 
ing,  where  there  are  two  hundred  seventy  colored  em 
ployees  in  the  corridors  and  offices  together  with  white  clerks. 
It  is  defended  by  Mr.  McAdoo  as  "an  effort  to  remove  causes 
of  complaint  and  friction  where  white  women  have  been  forced 
unnecessarily  to  sit  at  desks  with  colored  men."  But  there  is  no 
statement  that  there  have  been  many  such  complaints  or  that 
they  were  heard  of  under  previous  Administrations.  Nor  is  it 
explained  why  colored  clerks  are  taken  out  of  rooms  in  which 
their  sole  companions  are  white  men,  or  why,  if  there  should 
be  segregation  because  of  the  women,  the  Government  does  not 
segregate  all  its  women  clerks.  Nor  does  Mr.  McAdoo  record 
the  fact  that  in  many  instances  the  white  clerks,  without  respect 
to  sex,  have  gone  to  their  colored  associates  and  expressed 
their  complete  dissent  from  the  Government's  caste  undertaking. 
He  indignantly  denies  that  poorer  quarters  have  been  given  to 
the  segregated,  but  eye-witnesses  have  told  of  colored  women 
shut  off  in  an  unpleasant  alcove  in  one  office;  of  others  quietly 
forced  out  of  the  lunch-room  they  had  been  using  for  nine 
years  past,  of  men  clerks  segregated  behind  lockers  in  one 
corner  of  a  room  in  the  dead-letter  division  of  the  Post-Office 
Department.  Poorer  accommodations  for  the  segregated  are 
the  invariable  law  of  segregation.  To  the  colored  workers  all 
this  segregating  has  been  more  brutal  than  a  slap  in  the  face. 
It  is  as  if  the  great  Government  of  the  United  States  had  gone 
out  of  its  way  to  stamp  them  publicly  as  lepers,  as  physically  and 
morally  contagious  and  unfit  for  association  with  white  people. 
Among  them  are  perhaps  veterans  of  Fort  Wagner,  of  the 
Crater  of  Petersburg,  and  survivors  of  the  triumphal  march 
into  Richmond  of  General  Godfrey  Weitzel's  black  brigade; 
certainly  brothers  and  sisters  of  the  black  troopers  who  were 
good  enough  to  die  alongside  of  white  men  in  saving  ^the  day 
at  San  Juan  Hill  are  now  learning  to  know  the  gratitude  of 
Republics. 

These  colored  people  who  are  thus  branded  are  not  roust- 


302  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

abouts,  or  corner  loafers,  or  worthless  laborers.  They  are 
educated  men  and  women,  college  graduates  many  of  them,  from 
all  over  the  country  who  have  passed  their  civil-service  exam 
inations  and  entered  the  Government's  employ  with  full  faith 
in  its  justice,  asking  merely  the  right  to  serve  on  equal  terms 
with  their  fellows.  The  Negroes  have  borne,  as  patiently  as  the 
children  of  Israel  bore  their  burdens,  the  wrongs  of  disfran- 
chisement,  the  lynchings  and  burnings  of  innocent  and  guilty, 
the  humiliation  of  the  "Jim  Crow"  car,  the  constant  personal 
insults  of  low  whites;  these  were  the  acts  of  individuals  or  of 
States  lately  in  rebellion.  But  that  the  Federal  Government, 
under  whose  flag  they  have  fought  in  every  war,  under  whose 
aegis  they  are  working,  which  struck  their  fetters  from  their 
limbs,  should  now  take  the  side  of  the  oppressors  in  the  year 
of  the  fiftieth  anniversary  of  Lincoln's  Emancipation  Proclama 
tion — this  is  what  hurts  and  rankles  beyond  all  else.  Is  it  any 
wonder  that  one  of  the  leaders  of  the  race  of  national  renown 
writes  that  he  has  never  seen  his  people  so  discouraged  and 
so  embittered  as  today? 

They  rightly  declare — as  must  every  fair-minded  man  free 
from  prejudice — that  this  spells  caste.  They  believe  that  it  is 
intended  to  drive  them  out  of  the  public  service  by  rendering  it 
intolerable  for  Negroes  with  self-respect;  they  assert  that  one 
of  the  Assistant  Secretaries  of  the  Treasury  has  already  held 
up  the  promotion  of  two  colored  clerks  because  of  their  color. 
Segregation  is,  beyond  doubt,  an  entering  wedge,  and  here  is 
the  chief  significance  of  it  all.  Let  a  precedent  be  established, 
and  who  shall  say  what  the  outcome  will  be,  to  what  lengths 
despotic  officials  will  take  their  way  by  means  of  discrimination, 
intimidation,  by  aboveboard  or  underhand  methods?  Who  shall 
prophesy  to  what  'extent  this  caste  idea  may  not  be  developed  in 
the  decades  to  come?  If  Negroes  can  thus  be  set  apart  contrary 
to  the  spirit  of  the  civil-service  law  and  of  the  Constitution 
itself,  why  not  others — Jews,  for  instance? 

Those  who  in  this  day  and  generation  are  seeking  to  estab 
lish  two  classes  of  citizens,  the  disfranchised  and  enfranchised, 
to  say  that  there  shall  be  two  kinds  of  Government  employees 
they  are  on  the  high  road  to  convulsing  anew  this  land  of 
liberty,  which  will  never  know  peace  and  quiet  as  long  as  there 
are  discriminations  among  its  citizens.  Upon  their  heads  will 
be  the  responsibility  of  forcing  the  issue.  To  oppress  any 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  303 

group   of  human   beings,   or   to   deny   them    full   equality,   is   to 
court  disaster. 


HISTORIC  ATTEMPTS  TO  SOLVE  RACE  PROB 
LEM  IN  AMERICA  BY  DEPORTATION  * 

Deportation  and  colonization  of  the  Negroes  as  a  solution 
of  the  race  problem  is  not  a  modern  plan.  It  is  as  old  as  the 
feeling  against  slavery  and  the  prejudice  against  the  Negro 
race.  Had  the  slaves  been  of  the  same  race  as  the  masters, 
there  would  have  been  no  suggestion  of  deportation  and  coloni 
zation;  the  history  of  the  unfree  white  classes  in  Europe  and 
America  shows  what  the  solution  would  have  been.  But  in 
regard  to  black  slaves  there  was  another  problem  besides  that 
of  status — it  was  that  of  race.  Was  it  possible  for  two  free 
races  unlike  in  many  respects  to  inhabit  the  same  territory 
without  racial  conflicts?  After  emancipation  this  was  the  prob 
lem  that  had  to  be  solved. 

Most  people  of  the  colonial  period  and  the  early  Nineteenth 
Century  who  opposed  slavery  believed  that  deportation  must 
follow  emancipation.  Thomas  Jefferson,  for  example,  believed 
that  slavery  would  not  be  permanent,  that  the  slaves  would 
become  free,  but  that  they  could  not  be  free  in  the  country 
of  the  masters;  that  the  two  races  could  not  live  together  on 
terms  of  equality. 

Colonization  of  free  Negroes  in  tropical  countries  was  a 
New  England  suggestion.  It  was  first  publicly  mentioned  in 
1770,  by  Reverend  Samuel  Hopkins  of  Newport,  Rhode  Island, 
and  for  several  years  an  agitation  on  a  small  scale  was  carried 
on  by  him.  Considerable  interest  was  aroused  in  the  scheme 
and  men  who  were  opposed  to  slavery  and  to  the  presence  of 
Negroes  accepted  it  as  the  proper  solution  of  the  difficulties  in 
volved  in  emancipation. 

Out  of  this  feeling  developed  the  American  Colonization 
Society,  which  was  organized  gradually  between  1803  and  1817. 
The  object  of  this  society  was  to  encourage  emancipation  by 
providing  a  way  to  get  the  freed  Negroes  out  of  the  country. 
Prominent  men,  such  as  Jefferson,  Adams,  Madison  and  Clay, 

1  From  article  by  Walter  H.  Fleming,  A.M.,  Ph.D.  Professor  of  His 
tory  in  the  Louisiana  State  University.  Journal  of  American  History. 
4:197-213.  April,  1910. 


304  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

supported  the  work  of  the  society.  Most  of  its  members,  how 
ever,  were  from  the  North  and  from  the  border  slave  states,  few 
being  in  the  plantation  states;  and  branches  of  the  society  were 
found  in  all  those  states  which  had  numbers  of  free  Negroes. 

The  sentiment  that  resulted  in  the  formation  of  the  Coloniza 
tion  Society  also  caused  Congress  to  provide  for  the  return  to 
Africa  of  certain  free  Negroes  and  slaves  captured  from  slave 
traders.  The  society  was  used  by  Congress  as  its  agent,  fifty 
dollars  being  paid  for  each  Negro  carried  back  to  Africa  and 
there  subsisted  for  one  year.  Under  this  arrangement  the  society 
organized  Liberia,  and  by  1860  had  carried  about  eighteen 
thousand  Negroes  to  that  place.  During  and  after  the  war  about 
two  thousand  more  were  transported. 

The  small  numbers  show  that  the  society  did  not  solve  the 
free  Negro  problem.  For  this  failure  there  were  several  reasons : 
First,  free  Negroes,  hard  as  was  their  condition  in  America 
seldom  wanted  to  go  to  Africa,  and  none  except  Negroes  cap 
tured  from  slavers  could  be  forced  to  go ;  second,  the  work  of 
the  society  was  hindered  by  the  growth  of  radical  abolition 
sentiment  during  and  after  the  thirties.  The  abolitionists,  to  a 
certain  extent,  denied  the  principle  upon  which  the  Colonization 
Society  was  founded,  which  was  that  the  black  race  was  inferior 
to  the  white,  and  that  in  American  society  there  was  no  place 
for  the  free  blacks.  The  society  was  accused  of  encouraging 
race  prejudice  and  thus  strengthening  the  bonds  of  slavery. 
The  active  efforts  of  the  abolitionists,  and  the  introduction  of 
the  slavery  question  into  partisan  politics,  weakened  the  society 
and  caused  greater  regard  for  the  rights  of  the  Negro. 

A  National  Emigration  Convention  of  colored  people,  held 
in  Cleveland,  Ohio,  in  1854,  declared  that  a  proper  home  for 
the  race  must  be  found,  a  center  for  organization.  And  such 
a  place  could  be  only  where  the  black  race  was  in  the  majority 
and  could  constitute  the  ruling  element.  The  part  of  the  world 
best  suited  to  this  purpose  was  tropical  America — the  West 
Indies,  Central  America,  and  part  of  South  America — where 
they  considered  the  whites  worthless,  a  Negro  being  regarded 
as  the  equal  of  the  white,  and  as  a  citizen  often  preferred. 

Before  the  Civil  War  it  is  doubtful  if  any  considerable 
number  of  Northern  anti-slavery  people,  except  the  radical 
abolitionists,  would  have  advocated  wholesale  emancipation 
without  deportation.  The  advocates  of  gradual  emancipation 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  305 

recognized  that  in  order  to  meet  the  popular  objection  to  free 
Negroes  some  practical  plan  of  procedure  must  be  offered. 
Deportation  and  colonization  outside  of  the  United  States  was 
the  usual  plan  suggested.  During  the  fifties  another  argument 
was  offered  to  support  this  measure — it  was  that  the  American 
free  Negro  colonies  in  the  tropics  would  serve  the  extended 
American  civilization  and  American  commerce. 

The  Civil  War  began  and  the  "contrabands"  at  once  became 
a  burden  and  a  problem.  The  deportation  solution  was  again 
proposed  by  such  men  as  President  Lincoln  and  Senators  Blair, 
Doolittle  and  Pomeroy,  and  by  anti-slavery  Unionists  of  the 
border  states,  and  numerous  other  individuals. 

Since  the  close  of  the  war  there  has  been  much  discussion  of 
deportation  and  colonization,  but  very  little  practical  effort  made 
to  colonize.  The  American  Colonization  Society  kept  up  its 
work  after  the  war,  but  could  get  only  a  few  hundred  Negroes 
a  year.  Bishop  Turner,  of  the  African  Methodist  Episcopal 
Church,  has  for  years  been  the  leading  exponent  of  the  coloniza 
tion  idea,  and  while  his  views  are  indorsed  in  theory  by  many 
of  his  race,  few  have  gone  back  to  Africa.  After  the  failure  of 
the  "Exodus"  movement  of  1879-1882,  to  Kansas,  there  was 
strong  sentiment  in  favor  of  "separate  national  existence."  The 
United  Transatlantic  Society,  organized  during  the  eighties  by 
one  of  the  "Exodus"  leaders,  reflected  this  feeling,  but  had 
slight  results.  John  Temple  Graves  of  Georgia,  is  now  the 
leading  white  advocate  of  deportation. 

One  thing  that  has  prejudiced  the  Negroes  against  going  to 
Liberia,  and  other  proposed  places  of  settlement,  is  the  fact  that 
many  swindlers  have  taken  advantage  of  the  various  coloniza 
tion  schemes  to  defraud  the  Negroes  by  collecting  passage  money 
from  them  and  giving  them  in  return  fraudulent  tickets.  Negroes 
who  went  to  Liberia  have  come  back  with  bad  reports  of  the 
country.  The  Negro  and  the  Southern  white  each  favor  colon 
ization  in  a  way.  The  Negro  would  be  glad  to  go  if  sure  of 
doing  as  well  in  Africa  as  in  the  United  States.  The  white 
would  be  glad  to  have  the  entire  black  race  deported — except 
his  own  laborers.  Any  organized  emigration  scheme  invariably 
meets  more  or  less  forcible  resistance  from  the  employers  of 
labor. 


306  SELECTED  ARTICLES 


BLACK  AND  WHITE  IN  THE  SOUTH  ' 

The  future  seems  to  contain  four  possibilities,  or  rather 
conceivabilities,  which  may  be  examined  in  turn. 

(1)  Things   may  "worry  along"   in  the  present  profoundly 
unsatisfactory  condition,   until  the   Negro  gradually  dies   out. 

(2)  The   education  of  both   races,  and  the  moral  and  eco 
nomic  elevation  of  the  black  race,   may  gradually  enable  them 
to    live    side    by    side    in    mutual    tolerance    and    forbearance, 
without  mingling,  but  without  clashing. 

(3)  Marriage    between    persons    of    the   two    races    may—] 
mean  might  conceivably — be  legalized,  and  the  color  line  oblit 
erated  by  "miscegenation." 

(4)  The   Negro   race   might   be   geographically   segregated, 
by  deportation  or  otherwise,  and  established  in  a  community  or 
communities  of  its  own. 

The  first  eventuality — the  evanescence  of  the  Negro  race — 
we  have  already  examined  and  seen  to  be  highly  improbable. 
Let  me  only  add  here  that  there  is  one  way  in  which  it  might 
conceivably  be  brought  about— a  way  too  horrible  to  be  con 
templated,  yet  not  wholly  beyond  the  bounds  of  possibility.  The 
recurrence  of  such  an  outbreak  as  the  Atlanta  riot  of  1906 
might  lead  to  very  terrible  consequences.  On  that  occasion  the 
white  mob  found  the  Negroes  unarmed,  and  wreaked  its  frenzy 
practically  unopposed.  But  the  lesson  was  not  lost  on  the 
Negroes,  and  a  similar  onslaught  would,  in  many  places,  find 
them  armed  and  capable  of  a  certain  amount  of  resistance. 
In  that  case  one  dares  not  think  what  might  happen. 

It  would  be  an  exaggeration  to  say  that  the  South  lives  on 
the  brink  of  such  a  horror;  but  there  is  no  denying  that  the 
elements  are  present  which  might  one  day  bring  it  to  pass 
Sir  Sidney  Olivier  is  quite  right  in  calling  the  feeling  of  a 
large  class  of  Southerners  toward  the  Negro  "hysterical"  and 
ungoverned;  and  this  is  just  the  class  that  is  handiest  with  it? 
"guns."  Long  and  laborious  treatises  have  been  written  to 
prove,  on  Biblical  evidence,  that  the  Negro  is  a  "beast,"  and,  on 
scientific  evidence,  that  he  is  more  nearly  an  ape  than  a  man, 
These  works,  no  doubt,  are  scarcely  sane;  but  their  insanity 
is  by  no  means  peculiar  to  their  individual  authors.  The  word 

1  From   article  by  William  Archer.    McClure.     33:324-38.    July,    1909 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  307 

"extermination"  is  gravely  spoken  by  men  who  are  not  therefore 
to  be  held  maniacs  or  even  monomaniacs.  The  South,  says 
Mr.  W.  E.  B.  DuBois,  is  "simply  an  armed  camp  for  intimi 
dating  black  folk";  and  where  such  a  condition  prevails  the 
possibility  of  sudden  disaster  is  never  far  off.  To  recognize  the 
possibility  is  not  to  bring  it  nearer,  but  rather  to  indicate  the 
urgent  need  of  measures  that  shall  place  it  infinitely  remote. 

We  pass  now  to  the  second  eventuality — the  gradual  smooth 
ing  away  of  friction,  so  that  the  two  races  may  live  side  by 
side,  never  blending  and  yet  never  jarring.  This  is  the  concep 
tion  set  forth  in  Dr.  Booker  Washington's  celebrated  "Atlanta 
Compromise"  speech  of  1895,  wherein  he  said,  "In  all  things 
purely  social  we  can  be  as  separate  as  the  five  fingers,  and  yet 
one  as  the  hand  in  all  things  essential  to  mutual  progress." 
Is  this  a  possible — I  will  not  say  ideal,  for  that  it  manifestly  is 
not — but  a  possible  working  arrangement? 

The  assumed  improvement  of  conditions  (under  the  Atlanta 
(Compromise)  would  of  course  imply  a  steady  increase  in  the 
numbers  of  the  black  race;  so  that,  even  with  the  aid  of  immi 
gration  the  white  race  would  probably  not  add  to  its  numerical 
superiority.  Let  us  suppose  that  at  the  end  of  fifty  years  the 
colored  people  were  not  as  one  in  three,  but  as  one  in  four, 
and  that  this  ratio  remained  pretty  constant.  Here,  then,  we 
should  have  a  nation  within  a  nation,  unassimilated  and  (by 
hypothesis)  unassimilable,  occupying  one-fourth  of  the  whole 
field  of  existence,  and  performing  no  function  that  could  not, 
in  their  absence,  be  at  least  as  well  performed  by  assimilable 
people,  whose  presence  would  be  a  strength  to  the  community. 
The  black  nation  would  be  a  hampering,  extraneous  element 
in  the  body  politic,  like  a  bullet  encysted  in  the  human  frame. 
It  may  lie  there  for  years  without  setting  up  inflammation  or 
gangrene,  and  causing  no  more  than  occasional  twinges  of  pain; 
but  it  certainly  cannot  contribute  to  the  health,  efficiency,  or 
comfort  of  the  organism.  Is  it  wonderful  that  the  Atlanta 
Compromise,  supposing  it  realized  in  all  conceivable  perfection, 
should  excite  little  enthusiasm  in  the  white  South? 

But  to  imagine  it  realized  in  perfection  is  to  imagine  an 
impossibility — almost  a  contradiction  in  terms.  We  are  on  the 
one  hand  to  suppose  the  Negro  ambitious,  progressive,  pros 
perous,  and  on  the  other  hand  to  imagine  him  humbly  acquies 
cent  in  his  status  as  a  social  pariah.  The  thing  is  out  of  the 


308  SELECTED  ARTICLES 

question ;  such  saintlike  humility  has  long  ceased  to  form  any 
part  of  the  moral  equipment  of  the  American  Negro.  The 
bullet  could  never  be  thoroughly  encysted;  it  would  always  irri 
tate,  rankle,  fester.  It  is  quite  inconceivable  that  the  nation 
within  a  nation  should  acquiesce  in  disfranchisement;  and  the 
question  of  the  Negro  vote  will  always  be  a  disturbing  factor 
in  Southern  political  life.  Either  he  must  be  jockeyed  out  of  it 
by  devices  abhorrent  to  democratic  principle  and  more  or  less 
subversive  of  political  morality;  or,  if  he  be  honestly  suffered 
to  cast  his  ballot,  he  will  block  the  healthy  divergence  of 
political  opinion  in  the  South,  since,  in  any  party  conflict,  he 
would  hold  the  balance  between  the  two  sides,  and  thus  become 
the  dominant  power  in  the  state.  This  will  always  be  a  danger 
so  long  as  the  unassimilated  Negro  is  forced,  by  his  separate- 
ness,  to  think  and  act  first  as  a  Negro  and  only  in  the  second 
place  as  an  American.  Even  if  the  Atlanta  Compromise  were 
otherwise  realizable,  the  friction  at  this  point  would  always 
continue  acute. 

The  worst,  however,  remains  behind.  If  the  Atlanta  Com 
promise  were  possible  in  every  other  way,  it  would  be  impossible 
on  the  side  of  sex.  For  two  races  to  dwell  side  by  side  in  large 
numbers,  and  to  be  prohibited  from  coming  together  in  legal 
marriage,  is  unwholesome  and  demoralizing  to  both.  We  are 
here  at  the  very  heart  of  the  problem.  All  other  relations  are 
adjustable  at  a  certain  sacrifice;  but  not  this  one. 

I  venture  to  say  that  no  one — not  even  Dr.  Washington 
himself — really  believes  in  the  Atlanta  Compromise  as  a  stable 
solution  of  the  problem.  The  Negroes  who  accept  it  as  an 
interim  ideal  (so  to  speak)  never  doubt  that  it  is  but  a  stepping- 
stone  to  freedom  of  racial  intermixture.  They  see  that  so  long 
as  constant  physical  proquinity  endures,  the  color  barrier  between 
the  sexes  is  factitious  and  in  great  measure  unreal;  and  they 
believe  that  at  last  the  race-pride  of  the  white  man  will  be 
worn  down,  and  he  will  accept  the  inevitable  amalgamation. 
The  ultimate  forces  at  war  in  the  South  are  the  instinctive, 
half-conscious  desire  of  the  black  race  to  engraft  itself  on  the 
white  stock,  and  the  no  less  instinctive  horror  of  the  white 
stock  at  such  a  surrender  of  its  racial  integrity.  This  horror 
is  all  the  more  acute — all  the  more  morbid,  if  you  will — because 
the  white  race  is  conscious  of  its  own  frailty,  and  knows  that 
it  is  in  some  sense,  fighting  a  battle  against  perfidious  nature. 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  309 

This  brings  us,  of  course,  to  the  third  of  the  conceivabilities 
above  enumerated — the  legalization  of  marriage  between  the 
two  races.  To  the  white  South,  nothing  is  more  inconceivable : 
to  the  critics  of  the  white  South,  nothing  is  more  simple. 
Which  of  them  is  in  the  right? 

For  the  South  itself,  at  any  rate,  the  discussion  is  purely 
academic.  Amalgamation  is  a  thousand  leagues  remote  from 
the  sphere  of  practical  politics.  I  have  been  endeavoring  to 
state  for  outsiders  the  case  of  the  South  as  I  understand  it. 
I  may  have  stated  it  wrongly,  or  understated  it;  but  no  one 
can  possibly  overstate  the  resolve  of  the  South  that  the  color 
line  shall  not  be  obliterated  by  "miscegenation." 

Lastly,  we  have  to  consider  the  fourth  conceivable  even 
tuality — the  geographical  segregation  of  the  Negro  race, 
whether  within  or  without  the  limits  of  the  United  States. 

This  is  usually  ridiculed  as  an  absolutely  Utopian  scheme, 
and  at  the  outset  of  my  investigation  I  myself  regarded  it  in 
that  light.  But  the  more  I  saw  and  read  and  thought,  the 
oftener  and  the  more  urgently  did  segregation  recur  to  me  as 
the  one  possible  way  of  escape  from  an  otherwise  intolerable 
situation.  Not,  of  course,  the  instant,  and  wholesale,  and 
violent  deportation  of  ten  million  people — that  is  a  rank  im 
possibility.  Between  that  and  inert  acquiescence  in  the  ubi 
quity  of  the  Negro  throughout  the  Southern  States,  there  are 
many  middle  courses;  and  I  cannot  but  believe  that  the  first 
really  great  statesman  who  arises  in  America  will  prove  his 
greatness  by  grappling  with  this  vast  but  not  insoluble  prob 
lem.  And,  assuredly,  the  sooner  he  comes  the  better. 

The  deportation  of  the  Negro  has  been  urged  by  many 
American  writers,  generally  in  a  somewhat  illogical  fashion. 
They  start  by  asserting  his  total  incapacity  for  self-govern 
ment,  as  demonstrated  in  Haiti,  Liberia,  and  elsewhere,  and 
then  recommend  the  foundation  of  a  new  Negro  republic  in 
some  undefined  portion  of  Africa. 

In  no  form  does  the  African  project  seem  to  me  at  all  a 
hopeful  one.  The  habitable  portions  of  Africa  are,  I  take  it, 
pretty  well  staked  out  among  the  European  powers,  so  that  an 
elaborate  and  costly  international  arrangement  would  be  nec 
essary  before  the  requisite  territory  would  be  available.  But 
supposing  this  difficulty  overcome,  would  the  United ^  States  be 
justified  in  simply  dumping  its  colored  population  in  Africa, 


3io  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

and  then  washing  its  hands  of  them?  It  might  just  as  well 
drive  them  into  the  sea  and  have  done  with  it.  The  Negro 
character  has  shown  no  fitness  for  the  very  difficult  task  of 
combined  pioneering  and  nation-building  that  it  would  have 
to  encounter.  To  the  lower  elements  in  the  race,  the  return 
to  Africa  might  mean  repatriation  in  the  sense  of  a  not  un 
welcome  home-coming  to  savagery;  but  the  better  elements 
would  suffer  greatly  in  such  a  relapse,  while  of  their  own 
strength  they  probably  could  not  resist  it.  Toward  these  bet 
ter  elements,  and  indeed  toward  the  whole  race,  the  United 
States  has  a  responsibility  that  it  could  not,  and  certainly 
would  not,  shirk;  so  that  it  would  in  effect  have  to  undertake 
the  policing  of  a  distant,  troublesome,  and  unsatisfactory  de 
pendency,  which  might,  in  addition,  not  improbably  involve  it 
in  international  difficulties.  This  would  be  preferable  to  the 
present  state  of  things,  but  still  far  from  a  desirable  solution 
of  the  problem. 

The  same  objections  apply  to  a  settlement  in  South  Amer 
ica,  the  Philippines,  or  anywhere  else  outside  the  United 
States.  Deportation,  in  a  word,  is  beset  with  disadvantages. 
It  would  be  ruinously  costly  and  indefensibly  cruel.  If  there 
ever  was  a  time  for  it,  that  time  is  past. 

What,  then,  is  the  alternative?  Manifestly  concentration 
within  the  United  States — the  formation  of  a  new  State, 
which  should  be,  not  a  white  man's  land,  but  a  black  man's 
land. 

Is  this  physically  possible?  Is  there  enough  unoccupied 
territory  to  permit  of  such  a  concentration?  Of  absolutely 
unoccupied  territory  there  probably  is  not  enough;  but  those 
who  have  studied  the  matter  tell  us  that  there  is  plenty  of 
territory  so  thinly  occupied  that  the  white  settlers  could  be 
removed  and  compensated  at  no  extravagant  cost.  Accord 
ing  to  the  Honorable  John  Temple  Graves: 

Lower  California  might  be  secured.  The  lands  west  of  Texas  might 
be  had.  But  the  Government  does  not  need  to  purchase.  Four  hundred 
million  acres  of  Government  land  is  yet  untaken  and  undeveloped  in  the 
West.  Of  these  vast  acres  the  expert  hydrographer  of  the  Interior  De 
partment  has  reported  that  it  is  easily  possible  to  redeem  by  irrigation 
enough  to  support  in  plenty  a  population  of  sixty  million  people. 

We  may  liberally  discount  this  estimate,  and  yet  leave  it 
unquestionable  that  the  resources  of  the  United  States  are 
amply  sufficient  to  admit  of  the  establishment  of  a  new  State 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  311 

without  any  exorbitant  disturbance  of  the  existing  distribu 
tion  of  territory. 

It  would  be  absurd  for  me  to  forecast  in  any  detail  the 
methods  by  which  the  concentration  should  be  brought  about. 
They  must  be  devised  and  elaborated  by  the  great  American 
statesman  who  is  to  come.  If  he  can  successfully  grapple 
with  this  colossal  task,  he  will  deserve  to  lank  with  Wash 
ington  and  Lincoln  in  the  affections  of  his  countrymen.  It 
may  be  pretty  safely  predicted  that  he  will  attempt  no  sudden 
and  forcible  displacement  of  the  mass  01  the  Negro  race. 
Rather  he  will  establish  local  conditions  that  shall  tempt  the 
younger  and  more  enterprising  Negroes  to  migrate  of  their 
own  free  will. 

There  seems  to  be  little  doubt  that  the  Negro  race,  as  a 
whole,  would  welcome  any  reasonable  means  of  escape  from 
the  galling  conditions  of  their  life  in  the  South.  On  the 
other  hand,  there  is  no  doubt  whatever  that  all  the  more  in 
telligent  members  of  the  race  are  staunchly  and  even  patheti 
cally  loyal  to  American  ideals,  and  would  be  very  unwilling 
to  live  under  any  other  than  the  American  form  of  govern 
ment.  In  the  new  State,  they  would  be  members  of  a  Negro 
community  without  ceasing  to  be  American  citizens. 

I  am  far  from  denying  that  this  racial  readjustment  would 
demand  a  huge  effort  and  a  very  large  expense.  In  many 
individual  cases  it  might  cause  a  good  deal  of  hardship  to 
people  of  both  colors.  But  that  both  colors  would  enormous 
ly  and  permanently  benefit  by  the  effort  seems  to  me  indubit 
able.  It  would  be,  before  everything,  an  act  of  justice  to  the 
Negro.  It  would  enable  him  to  build  up  a  polity  of  his  own, 
on  lines  to  which  his  mind  is  already  habituated.  It  would 
offer  him  full  opportunity  for  the  development  of  his  talents 
and  ambitions,  unhampered  by  any  social  discriminations  or 
disabilities. 

"But,"  it  may  be  said,  "the  rights  and  liberties  of  civilized 
humanity  include  the  right  to  move  freely  hither  and  thither 
over  the  face  of  the  earth.  This  right,  at  any  rate,  would  be 
denied  to  the  Afro-American,  inclosed  within  the  ring-fence 
of  his  own  State."  There  is,  I  think,  a  sufficient  answer  to 
this  objection.  The  right  to  travel  would  not  be  denied  to 
the  Negro.  Nor  would  he  be  debarred  from  emigrating  and 
settling  abroad  among  any  community  that  was  willing  to 


3i2  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

receive  him.  It  is,  I  think,  becoming  more  and  more  clear  that 
the  right  of  every  man,  white,  black,  or  yellow,  to  effect  a 
permanent  settlement  outside  his  own  country,  is  subject  to 
this  qualification.  The  idea  that  all  the  world  ought  to  be 
long  equally  to  all  men,  and  that  rational  development  tends 
toward  an  unrestricted  intermingling  of  races,  seems  to  be 
signally  contradicted  by  the  trend  of  events.  Is  it  not  the 
great  essential  for  the  ultimate  world-peace  that  races  should 
learn  to  keep  themselves  to  themselvs? 


NEGRO'S  FATHERLAND  1 

The  future  of  Africa  is  one  of  the  most  important  questions 
to  be  answered  after  this  war.  The  very  silence  today  concern 
ing  that  future,  on  both  sides  of  the  forces  at  war,  emphasizes 
its  importance.  We  must  remember  that  in  Africa  we  have 
today  not  only  the  greatest  world  mine  of  undeveloped  human 
labor  but,  also,  that  much  of  the  raw  material  which  the  modern 
world  particularly  wants  is  to  be  found  in  Africa  more  abundantly 
than  anywhere  else.  Let  us  note  the  list:  Palm-oil,  cocoa, 
mahogany,  ebony,  cork,  cotton,  rubber,  ivory,  ostrich  feathers, 
gold,  copper,  iron,  zinc,  tin,  lead  and  diamonds, — these  are 
the  present  gifts  of  Africa  to  the  world.  Others  in  abundance 
hide  in  her  bosom.  The  fight  for  the  ownership  of  these  mate 
rials  and  the  domination  of  this  labor  was  a  prime  cause  of  the 
present  war.  If  this  question  is  to  be  left  unsettled  after  this 
war  it  is  going  to  be  a  prime  cause  of  future  wars. 

Why,  then,  are  we  so  silent  concerning  the  fate  of  some 
thing  between  one  hundred  fifty  million  to  two  hundred  million 
human  beings?  I  presume  that  the  cause  of  our  indifference  is 
largely  psychological.  It  is  the  penalty  of  human  degradation 
which  always  exacts  payment  from  oppressor  and  oppressed. 
Today  it  is  possible  to  ignore  the  Negro  because  of  a  history 
of  degradation  the  parallel  of  which  the  modern  world  does 
not  furnish.  In  ancient  Mediterranean  civilization  Negro  blood 
was  predominant  in  many  great  nations  and  present  in  nearly 
all.  Negro  genius  and  Negro  civilization  gave  here  their  great 
gifts  to  the  world.  In  the  European  middle  age  when  Africa 

1  By  W.  E.  B.  DuBois,  Director  of  Publications  and  Research.  Na 
tional  Association  for  the  Advancement  of  Colored  People.  Survey.  39: 
141.  November  10,  1917. 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  313 

became  more  or  less  separated  from  direct  contact  with  Europe, 
nevertheless,  African  culture  filtered  into  Europe,  and  legend 
and  story  and  song  came  out  of  the  dark  continent.  There  was 
then  no  question  of  racial  inferiority  based  upon  color.  But 
then,  beginning  late  in  the  fifteenth  century,  the  world  for 
four  hundred  years  raped  this  continent  on  a  scale  never  before 
equalled.  The  result  was  not  only  the  degradation  of  Africa, 
it  was  a  moral  degradation  of  those  who  were  guilty;  and  we 
are  still  living  in  the  shadow  of  the  debauch  of  the  African 
slave  trade.  It  comes  natural  for  us  to  have  great  masses  of 
unthought-of  men;  to  conceive  of  society  as  built  upon  an 
unsocial  mudsill.  It  is  possible  for  great  labor  organizations 
like  the  American  Federation  of  Labor  to  organize  themselves 
upon  distinctly  aristocratic  lines,  leaving  out  of  account  and 
out  of  thought  certain  so-called  lower  elements  of  labor.  It 
is  even  possible  for  an  organization  like  the  League  of  Small 
and  Subject  Nationalists  to  bring  in  Africa  only  as  an  accident 
and  after-thought.  This  mental  attitude  toward  Africa  and  its 
problems  builds  itself  upon  unclear  thinking  based  on  the 
tyranny  of  conventional  words. 

When  we  speak  of  modern  African  slavery  we  think  of 
modern  slavery  as  a  survival  of  ancient  slavery.  But  it  was 
not.  The  cleft  between  the  two  was  absolute.  Modern  African 
slavery  was  the  beginning  of  the  modern  labor  problem,  and 
must  be  looked  at  and  interpreted  from  that  point  of  view  unless 
we  would  lose  ourselves  in  an  altogether  false  analogy.  Modern 
world  commerce,  modern  imperialism,  the  modern  factory  system 
and  the  modern  labor  problem  began  with  the  African  slave 
trade.  The  first  modern  method  of  securing  labor  on  a  wide 
commercial  scale  and  primarily  for  profit  was  inaugurated  in 
the  middle  of  the  fifteenth  century  and  in  the  commerce  between 
Africa  and  America.  Through  the  slave  trade  Africa  lost  at 
least  one  hundred  million  human  beings,  with  all  the  attendant 
misery  and  economic  and  social  disorganization.  The  survivors 
of  this  wholesale  rape  became  a  great  international  laboring 
force  in  America  on  which  the  modern  capitalistic  movement 
has  been  built  and  out  of  which  modern  labor  problems  have 
arisen.  We  have  tried  ever  since  to  keep  these  black  men  and 
their  descendants  at  the  bottom  of  the  scale  on  the  theory  that 
they  were  not  thoroughly  men,  that  they  cannot  be  self-respecting 
members  of  and  contributors  to  modern  culture— an  assumption 


3i4  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

purely  modern  and  undreamed  of  in  ancient  or  medieval  days. 

If,  now,  this  same  psychology  and  this  same  determination 
to  exploit  and  enslave  these  people  passes  over  into  the  new 
world  after  the  war,  what  can  we  expect  but,  on  the  one  hand, 
persistence  of  the  idea  that  there  must  be  an  exploited  class 
at  the  bottom  of  civilization  and,  on  the  other,  an  endeavor  by 
endless  war  and  rapine,  futile  at  first  but  in  the  end  bound  to  be 
triumphant,  by  which  these  millions  of  people  will  gain  their 
right  to  think  and  act.  No  modern  world  can  dream  of  holding 
two  hundred  millions  of  people  in  permanent  slavery  even 
though  they  be  black.  If  it  tries,  the  cost  will  be  terrible.  If 
we  would  avoid  this  cost  then  we  must  begin  the  freeing  of 
Africa  through  this  war. 

It  would  be  the  least  that  Europe  could  do  in  return  and 
some  faint  reparation  for  the  terrible  world  history  between 
1441  and  1861  to  see  that  a  great  free  central  African  state  is 
erected  out  of  German  East  Africa  and  the  Belgian  Congo. 
Surely  after  Belgium  has  suffered  almost  as  much  from  Ger 
many  as  Africa  has  suffered  from  her,  she  ought  to  be  willing 
to  give  up  the  Congo  to  this  end;  and  it  would  be  right  that 
England  should  refrain  from  taking  German  East  Africa  as  well 
as  refrain  from  handing  it  back.  Out  of  this  state  we  could 
make  a  great  modern  effort  to  restore  the  ancient  efficiency  of 
the  land  that  gave  the  iron  age  to  all  the  world,  and  that  for 
ages  led  in  agriculture,  weaving,  metal  working,  and  the  traffic 
of  the  market  place.  Here  is  a  chance  such  as  the  world  has 
not  seen  since  the  fifteenth  century.  Liberia  and  Haiti  were 
never  given  a  sincere  chance  and  were  from  first  to  last  harassed, 
as  only  modern  capitalism  can  harass  little  and  hated  nations. 

The  effort  of  such  a  new  and  sincere  start  in  Africa  would 
be  tremendous.  Its  first  effect  would  be  upon  the  millions  of 
Africa  and  then  upon  their  descendants  throughout  the  world. 
In  the  West  Indies  and  in  South  America  are  some  thirty  millions 
of  men  of  Negro  descent.  They  have  given  literature  and 
freedom  to  Brazil;  they  have  given  industry  and  romance  to 
the  West  Indies,  and  they  have  given  to  North  America  art 
and  music  and  human  sensibility.  In  South  America  they 
may  lose  themselves  in  the  blood  of  other  people,  but  in  the 
West  Indies  and  North  America  they  are  striving  for  self 
expression  and  need  only  such  encouragement  as  just  treat 
ment  of  their  fatherland  and  its  spiritual  effect  on  the  whole 


THE   NEGRO   PROBLEM  315 

world  would  give.  I  trust,  therefore,  that  among  the  new 
nations  that  are  to  start  forth*  after  this  war  will  be  a  new 
Africa  and  a  new  beginning  of  culture  for  the  Negro  race. 


FUTURE  OF  THE  NEGRO  * 

Negro  emigration  is  the  solution  of  the  Negro  problem, 
from  three  points  of  view: 

1.  It  is  desirable    for    the    Negroes    themselves,    to    enable 
them  to    develop  a   racial  life  away  from  the  blight  of  caste 
stigma   and    the    monopoly   of    land    and   other   advantages   by 
the  whites. 

2.  It  is  desirable  from  the  Southerners'  standpoint,  in  that 
it  would  lighten  the  burdens  entailed  by  a  two-fold  population, 
remove  the  dangers  which  the     low     and     degraded     of     the 
colored   race  offer,    and   enable   the   South   to  be  American  in 
the  full  sense  in  its   social  and  political  make-up. 

3.  It  is  desirable  for  the  nation  as  a  whole,  as  the  comple 
tion  of   a  work  begun  and  carried  forward  by  the  two  great 
idealists   of    the   American   system,   Jefferson  and  Lincoln,   re 
moving  at   last   the   cause   of   bitter   division   between  brothers 
North  and  South. 

This  at  any  rate  is  a  broad  enough  hypothesis  from  which 
to  argue  a  vexed  question.  Only  Destiny  can  bring  to  a  har 
mony  a  theme  to  which  human  dulness  and  passion  have  set 
so  false  and  uncertain  a  key-note.  But  in  the  past  there  have 
been  a  few  whose  almost  prophetic  vision  seems  to  have  com 
passed  the  whole  design.  About  eighty  years  ago  a  few 
broad-minded  men,  among  them  Henry  Clay  of  Kentucky, 
started  Liberia,  a  colony  for  free  American  Negroes.  Lincoln, 
in  his  preliminary  Emancipation  Proclamation,  specifically 
stated  that  the  liberation  of  the  blacks  was  to  enable  them 
"to  colonize  in  Africa  or  elsewhere."  And  no  less  discerning 
a  mind  than  that  of  the  author  of  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin  pro 
phesied  the  return  of  the  freedmen  to  their  ancestral  home. 


Liberia  has  been  mostly  forgotten  in  the  noisy  material  ad 
vance  of  the  past  century,  but  it  still  exists  as  a  very  worthy 
example  of  self-government  in  Africa,  by  the  Africans,  des 
pite  the  craftiness  of  European  governments  and  a  frontier 
'From  article  by  Wallace  B.  Conant.  Arena.  40:62-5.  July,  1908. 


3i6  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

crowded  with  the  aboriginal  races  of  the  Dark  Continent.  As 
exacting  an  English  diplomatist  as  Sir  Harry  Johnston,  in  his 
recent  work,  Liberia,  leads  one  to  believe  that  the  little  re 
public  is  a  proper  success,  maintaining  the  ideal  of  Christian 
ity  and  freedom  in  the  face  of  great  obstacles.  Doubtless  it 
would  prove  a  greater  power  in  Africa  if  its  small  population 
were  to  be  reinforced  by  a  new  influx  of  Negroes  from  Amer 
ica — a  movement  which  doubtless  would  be  welcomed  by  the 
Liberians,  who  now  numbering  only  about  twenty-five  thousand, 
hold  a  territory  as  large  as  England  and  inhabitated  in  its 
hinterland  by  two  millions  of  savages. 

But  Liberia  is  only  one  of  several  tropical  regions  to 
which  the  Negro  might  resort. 

The  most  pertinent  phase  of  the  question  seems  to  be: 
would  Negroes  to  any  considerable  number  leave  America  if 
given  opportunity  and  aid  in  doing  so?  Of  course,  every 
thing  would  depend  on  the  attitude  of  the  recognized  leaders 
of  the  race.  Present  conditions  are  evidently  not  ripe  for 
such  a  movement.  But  it  is  the  future  that  is  being  con 
sidered  ;  and  time  may  bring  forward  a  leader  with  the  en 
thusiasm  of  a  Moses  to  lead  the  race  on  a  new  pilgrimage. 

It  is  evident  that  the  Negro,  and  not  the  whites,  must  de 
cide  what  the  Negro  will  do  for  himself.  If  the  Negro  were 
the  ward  of  the  nation,  as  he  began  to  be,  in  a  manner,  after 
emancipation,  and  as  the  Indian  has  long  been,  one  might 
expect  the  black  to  follow  the  red  men's  path  to  gradual  ex 
tinction  through  not  having  to  struggle  for  his  place  in  the 
world.  But  the  Negro  is  of  a  very  different  nature  from  the 
Indian.  He  takes  readily  to  organization,  is  naturally  coop 
erative,  as  the  numerous  churches,  lodges  and  societies  show; 
very  unlike  the  Indian,  who,  bereft  of  the  fields  and  woods 
that  maintain  his  free,  wild,  individualistic  life,  embraces  ob 
livion.  More  than  this,  the  individual  Negro  feels  himself  a 
part  of  a  distinct  and  peculiar  race.  In  certain  ways  the  Ne 
groes  in  America  resemble  the  Jews  in  their  various  periods 
of  captivity  and  wandering,  and  in  a  remarkable  manner  the 
race  finds  itself  reflected  in  the  history  of  the  Hebrew  people. 
More  than  any  other  class  in  this  country,  and  perhaps  more 
than  any  other  people  in  the  world,  the  Negro  reads  the 
Bible,  and  reads  it  literally.  He  finds  there  a  vital  parallelism 
between  the  story  of  the  Children  of  Israel  in  their  wander- 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  317 

ings  and  periods  of  slavery  and  his  own  race  history.  It  is 
natural,  then,  that  he  should  carry  the  analogy  further  and 
foresee  for  his  race  a  final  deliverance  and  a  happy  entrance 
into  Canaan.  Often  as  one  goes  through  the  South,  one 
hears  in  the  colored  churches  the  expressed  yearnings  for 
this  consummation. 


SOLUTIONS  l 

Many  solutions  of  the  problem  have  been  proposed ;  but,  for 
the  most  part,  they  are  too  altruistic,  ideal,  Utopian,  or  too  harsh, 
or  demand  too  vast  an  expenditure  of  labor  or  treasure.  To 
state  the  proposed  solutions,  with  the  stupendous  problem  held 
steadily  before  us,  is  to  recognize  at  once  their  chimerical  or 
impracticable  character. 

The  colonization  or  deportation  plans,  though  they  have 
received  high  approval,  may  be  dismissed  as  too  costly  or  too 
drastic,  and  as  involving  too  sudden  and  too  sweeping  changes  in 
our  industrial  conditions.  The  American  Negro,  having  tasted 
the  sweets  of  Caucasian  civilization,  contemplates  Santo  Do 
mingo  or  his  ancient  African  home  with  feelings  of  horror. 
He  would  have  to  be  colonized  or  deported  by  force.  The 
project  is  not,  however,  physically  impracticable,  as  will  at  once 
appear  when  we  consider  the  bringing  over  annually  of  a 
million  immigrants.  We  could  take  a  million  Negroes  to  Africa 
every  year,  if  we  felt  it  to  be  necessary  or  advisable;  but  the 
terrible  surgery  of  that  solution  must  be  reserved  for  a  more 
desperate  exigency. 

A  number  of  proposed  solutions  may  be  classified  as  "hyster 
ical."  Among  these  is  the  proposal  of  "control  by  influence," 
a  method  that  worked  well  enough  under  the  conditions  of 
slavery,  but  is  now  merely  naive  and  fanciful.  Senator  Till- 
man's  recently  proposed  solution  deserves  to  lead  this  class.  He 
would,  apparently,  establish  the  Prussian  or  Russian  spy  system, 
or  "passport  system,"  requiring  every  freeman  to  subject  him 
self  to  the  endless  and  intolerable  surveillance  of  the  police. 
These  "solutions,"  and  many  of  their  class,  do  not  go  to  the 
root  of  the  matter.  At  best,  they  are  but  makeshifts.  They 

'From  article,  Negro  Problem,  a  Southern  View,  by  .Stanhope  Sams. 
Editor  of  The  State,  Columbia,  S.C.  Eclectic  Magazine.  147:387-93. 
November,  1906. 


318  SELECTED  ARTICLES 

seek  to  control  the  Negro,  to  suppress  his  criminal  instincts, 
and  not  to  meet  frankly  and  solve  justly  the  great  problem  of 
race. 

The  most  important  class  of  solutions,  as  they  are  the  most 
stridently  insisted  upon,  may  be  grouped  under  the  phrase  that 
expresses  their  aim — "the  perfect  social  ideal."  This  is  the 
altruistic  and  millennial  solution  proposed  by  those  whom  Charles 
Francis  Adams,  formerly  enrolled  among  them,  before  a  visit 
to  black  Africa  made  "the  scales  fall  from  his  eyes,"  calls 
"philanthropists  and  theorists  of  New  England,"  and  who,  he 
says,  have  indulged  in  an  "appalling  amount  of  error  and  cant 
*  *  *  on  this  topic."  It  is  suggested  by  George  S.  Merriam,  in 
his  notable  work,  "The  Negro  and  the  Nation,"  and  is  vaguely 
hinted  at  by  that  eminent  and  scholarly  Negro,  Professor  Du 
Bois. 

DuBois's  "Promised  Land,"  seen  from  some  dreamy,  cloudy 
Pisgah,  is  not,  and  can  never  be,  the  republic  of  Anglo-Saxon 
or  American  civilization.  And,  of  right,  it  should  not  be.  A 
race  works  out  its  peculiar  civilization  for  itself  and  not  for 
others.  It  may  generously  allow  another  race  to  share  its 
garnered  fruits  and  opportunities  wrung  from  nature's  shut 
hand;  but  it  is  not  in  human  nature,  nor  to  be  expected,  that 
it  should  do  so.  Nor  has  the  backward  race  the  right  to  demand, 
and  it  is  not  privileged  to  ask,  such  concessions.  We  have 
come  far,  while  the  African  remains  chained  to  his  ancient 
fetishes  and  barbarism.  We  have  developed  the  highest  civili 
zation  of  modern  times,  within  the  brief  span  of  the  nineteen 
hundred  years  of  the  Christian  era,  while  the  Negro  is  today 
precisely  what  he  was  when  the  Pharaohs  enslaved  him  to  build 
their  pyramids,  seven  thousand  years  ago.  We  are  willing  to 
help  this  race,  to  uplift  it  and  speed  it  on  its  own  natural  path; 
but  we  would  not,  if  we  could,  set  it  beside  us  on  our  hard  won 
heights. 

One  of  the  chief  obstacles  to  a  satisfactory  solution  of  the 
race  question  is  the  want  of  race-consciousness  and  race-pride 
on  the  part  of  the  American  Negro.  Africa  makes  no  appeal 
to  him.  He  prates  of  "race,"  but  does  not  understand,  does  not 
feel,  its  urge.  He  feels  no  stir  of  inherited  patriotism  or 
tribal  or  racial  sentiments,  and  cherishes  no  ideals  of  inde 
pendence  and  a  native  culture  and  civilization.  He  is  perfectly 
content  to  be  reaping  where  he  has  not  sown,  and  gathering 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  319 


where  he  has  not  strewn.  The  demand  he  makes  for  equality 
cannot,  in  justice  to  ourselves,  be  met.  The  frontiers  of  race 
must  not  be  passed. 

The  demand  for  social  equality  is  even  more  preposterous. 
In  respect  to  the  Negro  in  this  country,  it  cannot  even 
considered.  No  race  has  ever  accorded  or  will  ever  accord 
an  inferior  race  the  full  measure  of  social  equality.  No  race 
has  ever  enforced  social  equality  among  its  own  members.  The 
caste  systems  of  the  Orient,  and  the  caste  and  class  systems 
of  the  West  bear  testimony  to  this  world-old  principle. 


as.  / 
be  / 
to  / 


FUTURE 

PROPOSED  SOLUTION  OF  THE  RACE 
PROBLEM  * 

Mr.  Edison  once  employed  some  assistants  to  make  several 
thousand  experiments,  in  search  of  one  of  nature's  secrets. 
All  proved  futile.  On  being  reproached  with  having  wasted 
time  and  labor  and  money,  Mr.  Edison  responded,  "Not  at 
all ;  I  know  several  thousand  things  not  to  do." 

Now  the  policy  of  repression  is  one  of  those  things  we 
may  be  sure  is  not  the  thing  to  do.  By  repression  I  do  not 
mean  keeping  a  man  in  "his  place,"  if  we  are  sure  we  know 
what  his  place  is;  but  the  avowed  policy  of  "keeping  the  Ne 
gro  down"  no  matter  what  capacities  he  may  develop.  It  is 
refusing  to  meet  squarely  the  question  of  merit.  First,  it  in 
creases  our  difficulties  with  the  Negro.  Once  give  him  real 
justification  to  disbelieve  in  the  justice  of  the  white  man,  and 
our  moral  hold  on  him  is  gone.  Secondly,  the  more  we  re 
fuse  the  just  demands  of  any  social  group,  the  greater  and 
more  insistent  become  the  unjust  and  unreasonable  demands 
of  that  group.  Thirdly,  if  you  keep  on  increasing  the  steam 
\  pressure  in  a  boiler  and  have  no  safety  valve,  it  will  ulti- 
1  mately  explode  and  hurt  something  besides  the  boiler.  Fourth 
ly  as  Mr.  Lecky  points  out,  one  of  the  greatest  forces  for 
I  the  moral  uplift  of  a  race  is  an  outlet  at  the  top  for  its  men 
I  of  talent.  It  i*  the  thing  not  to  do,  finally,  because  it  will  in- 
Vevitably  react  upon  the  white  race  to  its  own  undoing. 

This  idea  and  policy  of  repression  sometimes  takes  the 
form  of  advocating  ignorance  as  the  solution  of  all  difficulties. 
What  sort  of  education  to  give  the  Negro  is  a  very  practical 
and  sensible  question;  but  it  may  be  well  to  recall  what  the 
late  Dr.  J.  L.  Curry  used  to  say,  that  "ignorance  is  a  cure  for 
nothing." 

Another    one    of    the    things    not    to    do    is— lynch    law,    or 

iFrom  address  by  Charles  Breckinridge  Wilmer,  in  the  Conference 
on  Southern  Problems,  held  at  Sewanee,  Tenn.,  July  4  to  7,  1909-  Foren 
sic  Quarterly.  1:144^7.  June,  1910. 


322  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

mob  violence!  You  cannot  cure  crime  of  one  individual 
against  another  by  invoking  the  spirit  of  defiance  of  all  law 
and  order.  You  cannot  cure  a  broken  pane  of  glass  in  a 
house  by  dynamiting  the  foundation.  A  single  crime,  how 
ever  heinous,  is  a  single  demon  at  work;  mob  violence  is  the 
reign  of  the  prince  of  demons. 

In  the  punishment  of  crime  at  least  three  things  are  essen 
tial  :  the  punishment  must  be  the  right  punishment,  it  must  be 
inflicted  in  the  right  spirit,  and  it  must  be  visited  upon  the 
right  man.  It  has  taken  thousands  of  years  to  build  up  a 
civilization  based  on  these  accepted  truths.  To  substitute  a 
mob  inflamed  with  passion  for  a  court  of  justice  is  to  destroy 
the  civilization  we  have  built  up.  If  there  were  any  real  pro 
tection  for  our  homes  in  mob  violence,  one  might  question 
the  expediency  of  doing  right;  but  there  is  no  protection  for 
anybody  in  mob  violence.  There  is  about  as  much  protection 
in  it  as  there  would  be  for  Holland  if  its  population  were  to 
destroy  the  dykes  that  shut  out  the  ocean,  in  order  to  kill  a 
few  crayfish!  Experiencing  almost  daily  the  terrible  tempta 
tion  to  meet  violence  with  violence,  let  us  learn  that  in  self- 
control  lie  both  our  only  safety  and  our  only  hope  of  control 
ling  others. 

Another  thing  not  to  do,  is  hating  other  people.  Hatred, 
let  us  remember,  solves  no  problems,  but  complicates  all  prob 
lems.  What  then  is  there  left  for  us  to  do? 

In  the  constructive  discussion  of  this  question,  the  possi 
bilities  are  usually  reduced  to  three.  The  first  proposal  is 
Extermination,  either  permitted  or  inflicted ;  the  second  is 
Amalgamation;  the  third  is  Segregation.  Let  us  examine 
these  in  turn. 

Extermination  means  that  we  murder  the  %whole  race,  or, 
if  we  find  them  dying  off,  acquiesce  in  the  decree  of  a  kindly 
Providence.  Now  if  it  be  the  right  and  wise  thing  to  do  to 
murder  a  Negro  every  time  he  gets  in  the  way  of  some  plan 
of  ours,  or  has  a  job  that  some  white  man  wants,  why  not 
murder  the  whole  race  at  once  and  be  done  with  it?  We 
have  to  choose  between  Christ  and  the  Devil.  But  if  the 
Devil  be  God,  why  not  follow  him  to  the  utmost?  If  the 
proposition  is  its  own  refutation,  thdi  let  us  follow  Christ 
wholly.  Let  us  be  done  with  the  spirit  of  murder.  Let  us 
serve  notice  in  unmistakable  terms  on  the  few  individuals  who 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  323 

propose  murder,  that  we  will  not  stand  for  it.  And  let  us 
train  our  boys  and  girls  to  know  that  we  cannot  follow 
or  desire  to  follow  such  a  policy  without  working  moral  ruin 
on  ourselves.  That  is  clear.  But  how  about  taking  satisfac 
tion  in  the  thought  that  disease  will  carry  off  the  Negro 
race?  Just  neglecting  to  do  anything  to  help  the  Negro  to 
survive  ? 

But  the  spirit  of  permitting  people  to  die  without  extend 
ing  a  helping  hand  is  the  spirit  of  murder ;  and,  besides,  does 
any  sane  man  suppose  for  one  instant  that  ten  million  people 
can  die  in  our  midst  of  disease,  and  not  convey  any  of  that 
disease  to  us  white  people?  God  has  so  constituted  human  so 
ciety  that  whether  we  will  or  not,  we  are  members  one  of  an 
other,  and  if  one  member  suffers,  all  suffer.  Even  if  we  were 
mean  enough  to  be  murderous,  the  necessity  of  physical  self- 
preservation  forbids.  Extermination  won't  do. 

A  second  remedy  proposed  by  some  extremists  is  amalgama 
tion,  the  fusing  together  of  the  two  races.  Our  feelings  revolt 
so  against  the  very  idea,  that  discussion  for  us  of  such  a  proposi 
tion  is  not  only  unnecessary  but  well  nigh  intolerable.  Yet  it 
is  necessary  to  discuss  it,  not  only  because  feelings  should  sub 
mit  to  scientific  test,  but  because  our  feelings  do  not  suffice  for 
arguments  with  people  who  do  not  share  them  with  us.  To 
those,  then,  who  seriously  propose  such  a  way  out  of  our  diffi 
culties,  we  have  simply  to  say,  that  the  thing  is  impracticable 
because  we  will  not,  and  further  that,  on  scientific  grounds,  we 
ought  not  to  suffer  it.  We  beg  theorizers  in  other  parts  of  the 
world  to  consider,— not  our  feelings,  they  are  under  no  obliga 
tion  to  do  that,— but  two  facts :  first,  that  amalgamation  does  not 
produce  a  race  superior  to  the  white  race;  and,  secondly,  that 
the  advocacy  of  such  ideas  is  prejudicial  to  the  best  interests  of 
society  as  a  whole,  and  is  likely  to  stir  among  certain  members 
of  the  Negro  race  false  ambitions  that  tempt  them  away  from 
the  path  of  their  best  chance,  which  is  racial  integrity.  It  is 
only  fair  to  the  Negroes  themselves  to  say  that,  in  the  main, 
they  do  not  ask  for  social  equality.  As  has  been  strikingly 
observed,  "for  one  Negro  that  is  advocating  social  equality, 
there  are  ten  white  men  who  are  practicing  it  in  its  most 
heinous  form." 

For  closely  connected  with  the  question  of  race  integrity 
is  the  question  of  social  equality.  If  we  are  not  to  have 


324  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

race  amalgamation,  it  is  but  common  sense  not  to  allow  such 
things  as  naturally  lead  up  to  and  suggest  race  amalgama 
tion.  And  so  the  South  is  irrevocably  committed  to  separate 
schools,  and  separation  in  general  wherever  demanded  by  the 
denial  of  social  equality.  It  is  in  vain  that  theorists  cry  out 
against  this  as  caste.  Separation  is  not  necessarily  caste. 
Every  opportunity  should  be  given  to  the  Negroes  to  advance 
along  their  own  lines.  So  far  from  social  separation  leading  to 
injustice,  it  is  the  only  policy  that  will  make  justice  possible. 
When  once  that  question  is  understood  to  be  settled,  when  once 
there  is  a  recognized  line  which  neither  may  cross,  then  justice 
and  friendship  may  be  built  up.  And  I  would  here  point  out 
to  theorists  and  doctrinaires  not  only  that  no  wise  friend  of  the 
human  race  will  undertake  to  violate  the  law  of  progress,  but 
that  they  are  standing  in  the  way  of  equitable  settlement  of 
affairs  in  the  South.  The  real  friend  of  the  Negro  in  the  South 
would  gather  together  both  extremists  and  say,  "a  plague  on 
both  your  houses."  This  seems  the  proper  place  in  which  to 
say  a  word  about  our  own  failure  to  preserve  complete  race  in 
tegrity.  Every  white  man  should  set  his  face  against  any  such 
surrender  of  the  whole  principle  of  race  integrity,  as  well  as 
such  violation  of  the  law  of  morality.  The  consequences  form 
one  of  the  most  conspicuous  instances  of  the  visiting  of  the 
sins  of  the  fathers  upon  the  children. 

The  third  proposed  solution  is,  segregation ;  setting  the 
Negroes  apart  by  themselves,  either  in  some  portion  of  the 
United  States,  or  somewhere  else  in  the  world.  This  is  a 
solution  of  the  Race  Problem  in  the  same  sense  that  divorce  is 
a  solution  of  the  marriage  problem.  It  would  mean  that  we 
cannot  get  along  in  peace,  righteousness  and  fraternity  dwelling 
under  the  same  civic  roof.  It  means  that  Anglo-Saxon  supe 
riority,  proclaiming  its  right  to  rule,  confesses  its  inability  to 
govern.  Now  I  am  no  prophet  nor  the  son  of  a  prophet.  At 
least,  I  am  no  predictor.  I  do  not  dogmatically  affirm  that  we 
may  not  have  to  come  to  segregation,  as  a  last  resort.  But  I 
hazard  the  contention,  as,  in  some  degree  a  discerner  of  human 
duties  and  divine  principles,  that  such  a  total  surrender  of  the 
task,  providentially  laid  upon  us,  is  unnecessary.  I  am  perfectly 
sure,  moreover,  that  if  we  fail  to  work  out  some  solution,  that 
we,  or  somebody  else  in  other  ages,  will  have  the  same  problem 
to  face  again.  The  Race  Problem  in  a  large,  and  not  merely  in 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  325 

a  local,  sense  is  fast  becoming  the  world  problem.  We  have  to 
find  out  how  the  different  races  can  get  along  with  each  other 
on  the  same  earth.  We  cannot  send  the  Negroes  or  the  orien 
tals  to  some  other  planet.  And  that  is  just  what  is  really 
involved  in  the  policy  of  "shirk."  It  is  perfectly  plain  that 
segregating  the  Negroes  means  postponing  the  issue,  and  not 
even  its  permanent  evasion.  Such  a  postponement  seems  likely 
to  increase  rather  than  diminish  the  difficulties  of  solution. 
Are  we  willing  to  hand  down  to  our  descendants  such  a  task, 
with  all  its  inherent  difficulties  augmented  by  our  own  failures? 
Is  that  worthy  of  the  superior  race?  And  who  would  not  make 
some  contribution  to  the  ultimate  reign  of  peace  on  earth? 
Suppose  that  we  in  the  South,  both  white  and  black,  could 
establish  some  modus  vivendi,  would  not  that  help  in  the  final 
solution  of  the  world  problem  of  racial  amity?  Is  not  the 
situation  a  challenge  to  a  man, — to  a  superior,  a  Christian  race? 
Shall  we  basely,  and  in  a  manner  essentially  cowardly  give  it 
up,  at  least  until  we  are  compelled  to  confess  our  inability  to 
solve  the  problem?  The  man  who  fails  to  see  that  we  do  not 
solve  problems  by  pushing  them  aside,  is  the  proverbial  ostrich. 
He  thinks  that  when  he  buries  his  head  in  the  sand,  not  only 
the  God  of  the  Universe  no  longer  beholds  him,  but  that  what  he 
himself  puts  out  of  his  sight  ceases  to  exist.  We  may  have  to 
come  to  segregation,  but  let  us  first  exhaust  every  other  possi 
bility.  Besides,  were  we  to  carry  out  the  plan  of  segregation, 
who  is  going  to  begin?  Every  now  and  then  we  hear  someone 
advocating  the  removal  of  the  Negro  in  general  from  our  midst, 
but  has  one  ever  heard  any  of  the  advocates  of  the  plan,  or 
heard  anyone  else  come  down  to  the  Negro  in  particular  and 
cry:  "Here  is  my  cook,  here  is  my  washerwoman,  here  are  my 
farm  hands;  take  them  to  start  with?"  Along  with  the  voice  of 
the  turtle  dove  in  the  spring  and  the  call  of  the  quail  in  the 
fall,  has  anybody  heard  such  voices  as  these?  Until  we  are 
ready  to  make  that  sacrifice,  and  actually  get  rid  of  these  people, 
the  advocacy  of  segregation  has  somewhat  the  same  sort  of 
effect  on  the  situation  as  if  a  married  couple  were  trying  to  get 
along  with  one  another  despite  some  incompatibility  of  temper 
ament,  by  the  faithful  discharge  of  obvious  duties,  and  some  one 
were  continually  dinning  into  their  ears  that  it  is  of  no  use  try 
ing  to  get  along!  I  may  be  mistaken  but  it  seems  to  me  that 
continually  directing  attention  to  the  sore  spots  in  our  Southern 


326  SELECTED  ARTICLES 

life,  and  overlooking  everything  that  makes  for  peace  and 
health,  and  doing  nothing  to  make  things  better  day  by  day,  is 
the  reverse  of  wisdom. 

Besides  the  ideal  of  service,  another  element  that  ought 
to  occupy  a  large  place  in  our  educational  curriculum  is  so 
ciology,  the  science  of  human  society,  with  special  reference 
to  our  race  problem.  It  is  astonishing  what  effect  even  a  lit 
tle  knowledge  of  sociology  has  in  interesting  and  clarifying 
the  mind  and  subduing  the  passions.  Would  you  expect  to 
find  a  student  of  sociology  in  a  lynching  party? 

At  present,  the  most  difficult  adjustment  to  make  is  in  the 
realm  of  politics.  So  long  as  the  Fifteenth  Amendment  to  the 
Constitution  stands,  the  Negro  cannot  be  discriminated 
against,  in  the  matter  of  the  suffrage,  on  the  ground  of  "race, 
color,  or  previous  condition  of  servitude."  After  the  revolu 
tion  following  the  withdrawal  of  Federal  troups,  first  fraud 
and  violence,  and  then  suffrage  qualification  laws,  have  sufficed 
to  keep  the  government  in  the  hands  of  the  whites.  These 
laws  have  been  able,  so  far,  to  run  the  gantlet  of  the  Supreme 
Court  of  the  United  States.  But  their  moral  is  more  dubious 
than  their  legal  status.  Their  effect,  in  some  instances,  is  to 
give  a  white  man,  who  has  no  property,  education,  intelligence 
or  visible  merit  of  any  kind,  superior  consideration  over  a 
Negro  possessing  civic  capacity,  measured  by  the  tests  white 
men  themselves  have  invented.  Although  this  is  an  extreme 
case,  yet  it  may  be  fairly  doubted  whether  it  is  not  a  bad  thing 
for  the  whites  themselves,  (the  whites  of  small  education  and 
property),  to  grant  them  civic  rights  merely  on  account  of  their 
race.  What  these  people  need  more  than  anything  else  is  a 
spur  to  their  ambition,  and  a  quietus  put  on  their  false  pride. 
A  suffrage  qualification  law,  fairly  and  squarely  applied  to 
both  races,  would  be  best  for  all.  We  can  hardly  expect  to 
maintain  our  claim  of  racial  superiority  so  long  as  we  refuse 
to  subject  our  own  people  to  the  same  tests  we  apply  to  the 
Negro;  nor  can  we  convince  the  Negro  of  our  justice  toward 
him,  when  we  say  that  he  shall  not  vote,  no  matter  what  his 
qualifications.  So  far  as  the  mass  of  the  Negro  race  is  con 
cerned,  their  civic  capacity  is  small,  and  their  moral  and  in 
dustrial  progress,  as  a  race,  has  been  sadly  retarded  by  giving 
them  the  suffrage.  It  has  greatly  fostered  that  spirit  which 
Booker  Washington  so  well  hit  off  when  he  declared,  "our 


THE  NEGRO   PROBLEM  327 

people  are  all  the  time  talking  about  'gitin'  recognition,' 
whereas  what  we  need  is  to  get  something  to  recognize."  The 
main  fault  to  be  found  with  the  false  leaders  of  the  Negro 
race,  both  white  and  colored,  is  the  tendency  to  harp  upon  the 
rights  of  the  Negro  to  the  exclusion,  or  at  least  the  minimi 
zing  of  his  duties. 

An  expedient  which  will  help  greatly  to  solve  our  problem 
in  details,  or  at  least  make  for  peace  between  the  races,  is  friend 
ly  conferences.  Up  to  the  time  of  the  Atlanta  riot  (Septem 
ber,  1906),  there  had  been  practically  no  opportunity  for  the 
leading  men  of  the  two  races  to  confer.  If  Negro  brutes 
shocked  the  civilized  world  with  their  crimes  against  the 
whites,  respectable  Negroes  had  no  opportunity  to  express 
their  abhorrence,  or  to  cooperate  with  the  civilized  whites  for 
the  detection  and  punishment  of  such  crimes.  If  brutal 
whites  were  guilty  of  injustice  against  some  helpless  blacks, 
the  race  in  its  best  representatives  suffered,  with  no  oppor 
tunity  to  complain,  except  in  their  prayers  to  the  God  of  the 
weak  and  helpless.  It  is  too  true  that  the  Negroes  in  general 
are  disposed  to  shield  criminals  of  their  own  race;  but,  not  to 
speak  of  the  fact  that  this  is  partly  induced  by  mob  violence 
on  the  part  of  the  whites,  my  reference  in  the  matter  of  such 
conferences  is  to  the  superior  Negroes.  Realizing  that  not 
all  Negroes  are  bad,  that  we  must  make  a  discrimination  be 
tween  the  bad  and  the  good,  and  that  by  enlisting  the  best 
elements  of  both  races  in  cooperation  for  the  common  good, 
the  strain  could  greatly  be  relieved,  two  Associations,  one 
white  and  the  other  black,  were  formed  in  Atlanta,  with  ex 
ecutive  committees  that  could  confer  in  any  emergency. 
Great  good  was  done  by  the  satisfactory  settlement  of  par 
ticular  difficulties  as  they  arose,  but  more  still  by  a  general 
diffusion  of  the  spirit  of  justice  and  good  will.  The  conduct 
of  the  committee  of  blacks  was  without  exception  creditable 
to  their  impartial  sense  of  justice,  their  intelligence  and  their 
efficiency.  I  am  told  by  the  chairman  of  the  white  committee 
that  in  no  single  instance  was  a  judgment  of  the  committee 
of  blacks  reversed  by  the  whites. 

There  is  opportunity  for  such  organized  conferences  all 
over  the  South,  and  their  possibilities  for  good  are  boundless. 
It  is  still  the  hall-mark  of  a  gentleman  in  the  South  that  he 
is  willing  to  give  the  Negro  a  chance.  The  Negro  race  needs 


328  SELECTED  ARTICLES 

the  white  race  as  a  friend,  both  individually  and  sociological 
ly.  The  cultivation  of  something  of  the  old  time  and  rapidly 
disappearing  friendly  feeling,  between  individual  members  of 
the  two  races  will  do  good  now,  as  it  did  good  in  the  past; 
and,  properly  guarded,  it  need  not  involve  any  danger.  The 
Negro  cannot  stand  alone;  but  the  very  people  who  seem  to 
glory  in  talking  of  the  dependence  of  the  Negro,  are  usually 
those  who  tell  us  we  ought  to  put  him  off  by  himself  where, 
they  assure  us,  he  will  revert  to  barbarism!  It  will  greatly 
help  if  we  cultivate  a  sympathetic  spirit  toward  the  Negro. 
He  has  been  more  sinned  against  than  sinning.  He  has  been 
the  victim  of  doctrinaires  and  politicians,  white  and  black. 
On  his  back,  sometimes  by  abusing  and  sometimes  by  using 
him,  hundreds  of  politicians  have  ridden  into  office.  And  let 
us  make  allowances  for  the  Negro.  He  was  led  into  a  fool's 
paradise,  and  has  been  rudely  awakened  from  his  dream  of 
"forty  acres  and  a  mule."  He  is  for  the  most  part  in  the 
wilderness,  between  his  Egypt  and  his  Promised  Land  of  true 
manhood.  He  was  thrown  overboard  into  the  civic  waters 
without  having  been  taught  how  to  swim.  If  sometimes  he 
is  "sassy,"  let  us  remember  that  the  "sassy"  Negro  is  a  green 
persimmon;  he  will  ripen  after  awhile,  when  he  has  learned 
that  "sassiness"  and  obsequiousness  are  two  equally  objection 
able  extremes.  He  will  learn  to  be  both  respectful,  and  self- 
respecting.  Let  us  use  our  power  not  arbitrarily  but  for  his 
good,  showing  him  that  it  is  the  expression  of  reason  and 
justice.  Let  us  show  him,  both  personally  and  in  our  civic 
life,  that  we  think  more  of  a  good  Negro  than  we  do  of  a 
bad  one. 

And  in  this  connection  I  would  say  that  of  all  the  people 
in  this  our  Southern  land  who  deserve  admiration,  mine  goes 
out  in  the  highest  degree  to  the  Negro  who  (born  of  a  backward 
and  sensual  race,  surrounded  by  millions  whose  standards  do  not 
uplift,  frowned  down  on  too  often  by  haughty  superiors,  with 
every  temptation  to  do  wrong,  and  little  inducement  to  do 
right),  leads  nevertheless  an  industrious,  clean  and  honest  life, 
respecting  himself  and  others.  And  we  should  take  courage. 
Such  Negroes  may  come  to  constitute  an  ever-increasing  pro 
portion  of  their  race. 

In  conclusion,  as  my  last  constructive  suggestion,  let  me 
urge  all  men  who  wish  well  to  their  fellows  and  love  this 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  329 

"South  land,"  to  "get  together,"  and  not  leave  the  whole  dis 
cussion  of  the  complicated  and  vital  matter  to  the  newspapers 
and  politicians,  actuated  more  or  less  by  special  interests,  pri 
vate  or  corporate.  Let  us  all  endeavor  to  make  our  con 
tribution.  The  silent  South  should  speak,  that  it  may  come 
fully  to  understand  itself,  and  its  relation  to  the  problem 
which  has  been  set  us  to  solve  for  the  nation  and  the  world. 


PSYCHOLOGICAL   FACTOR  IN   SOUTHERN 
RACE  PROBLEMS  1 

The  more  the  races  of  men  are  studied,  the  more  certain 
becomes  the  evidence  to  show  that  races  have  characteristic 
mental  peculiarities,  which  would  serve  to  distinguish  species 
and  varieties  almost  as  well  as  physical  characteristics.  In 
practical  life,  in  jurisprudence,  in  language  itself,  we  empiri 
cally  allow  for  these  racial  mental  differences.  But  we  have 
never  taken  the  trouble  to  study  them  nor  to  understand  their 
nature  from  a  scientific  point  of  view,  and  almost  nothing  is 
known  about  their  potentialities. 

Taking  as  a  fact  these  mental  differences,  let  us  for  a  mo 
ment  consider  the  possibility  of  their  modification.  It  has 
been  pointed  out  that  mental  differences  must  ultimately  de 
pend  upon  material  anatomical  differences  in  brain-structure; 
if  we  deny  this,  we  instantly  remove  racial  psychology  from 
the  field  of  science  to  that  of  metaphysics,  and  controvert  all 
the  observed  data  of  physiological  psychology;  there  must  be 
some  structural  differences  between  the  brain  of  a  Negro  and 
that  of  a  white  man,  though  such  differences  are  admittedly 
very  hard  to  detect  by  present  methods.  We  know  that  it  is 
impossible  for  us  to  modify  anatomical  structures  at  will;  we 
can  undoubtedly  change  them  (within  narrow  limits,  by  selec 
tion  of  characters  already  present  and  the  accentuation  of 
these),  but  we  can  not  make  any  two  differing  anatomical  char 
acters  become  exactly  alike.  Why,  then,  should  we  assume 
that  we  can  modify  at  will  the  mental  processes  of  a  race, 
since  these  mental  processes  are  expressions  of  a  certain  defi 
nite  anatomical  and  physiological  organization,  which  we 

1  From  article  by  James  Bardin,  University  of  Virginia.  Popular  Science 
Monthly.  83:368-74.  October,  1913. 


330  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

know  can  not  be  altered  save  by  the  crossing  of  bloods  or  by 
the  laborious  and  infinitely  slow  processes  of  evolution? 

Yet,  North  and  South,  we  wish  to  do  this  very  thing,  and 
to  do  it  in  its  extreme  form.  For  we  are  not  merely  trying 
to  change  the  direction  of  the  Negro's  peculiar  mental  char 
acteristics,  and  to  improve  them  by  selection  among  the  ele 
ments  already  present — we  are  trying,  on  the  contrary,  to  de 
prive  the  Negro  of  his  own  racial  mental  characteristics,  and 
to  substitute  our  own  in  their  place,  at  the  same  time  keeping 
him  anatomically  a  Negro.  That  this  is  an  impossibility  fol 
lows  after  the  former  argument. 

It  will  undoubtedly  be  said,  by  way  of  refutation,  that  the 
Negroes  of  the  southern  states  have  advanced  and  advanced 
considerably  since  they  have  been  in  this  country.  This  is  un 
reservedly  true.  But  it  is  often  forgotten  that  they  have  ad 
vanced  as  Negroes,  not  as  anything  else.  They  have  adopted 
the  form  of  our  civilization  and  to  a  certain  extent  (due 
principally  to  the  influence  of  language),  the  mould  of  our 
thought.  But  however  much  the  form  of  the  civilization  and 
the  mould  of  the  thought  resemble  our  own,  the  substance  of 
both  are  different.  The  Negro  has  received  much  from  us,  and 
has  profited  greatly  therefrom;  but  all  that  he  has  received 
he  has  modified  in  accordance  with  his  racial  mental-set,  and 
his  psychical  reactions  to  the  influences  of  our  civilization  are 
entirely  different  from  our  own,  and  will  necessarily  remain 
so  as  long  as  the  Negro  is  a  Negro.  No  matter  how  much 
we  educate  him,  no  matter  how  much  we  better  his  position 
in  society,  he  will  remain  a  Negro  psychically  as  long  as  he 
remains  a  Negro  physically.  We  may  cause  him  to  absorb 
the  full,  rich  store  of  our  cultural  elements,  but  by  the  time 
these  elements  have  gone  through  the  channels  of  his  thought 
they  will  be  profoundly  modified,  and  they  will  take  on  a  dif 
ferent  meaning  in  the  Negro's  consciousness  from  what  they 
have  in  the  white  man's  consciousness.  Concomitantly,  these 
cultural  elements  will  modify  the  brain  of  the  Negro ;  but  this 
modification  will  not  follow  the  same  pathways  and  will  not 
give  the  same  results  as  it  would  in  the  untutored  brain,  say, 
of  a  white  child.  The  modifying  forces  acting  upon  the  Ne 
gro's  brain  will  have  to  start  with  an  anatomical  structure  al 
ready  formed  and  set  by  heredity,  an  anatomical  structure 
different  from  that  of  the  white  race,  which  produced  the 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  331 

modifying  forces  in  question,  and  the  final  result  in  the  Ne 
gro's  brain  will  be  determined  and  directed  by  this  preexis- 
tent  anatomical  make-up.  So  that  the  brain  and  the  conscious 
ness  resulting  from  the  absorption  of  our  culture  by  the  Ne 
groes  will  be  a  brain  and  a  consciousness  different  from  our 
own  to  the  same  extent  that  the  Negro  differs  from  us  in 
other  respects,  and  both  will  be  characteristically  Negroid  in 
nature,  not  European. 

It  follows,  therefore,  that  present  ideals  in  regard  to  the 
"solution"  of  our  Negro  problem  (ideals,  as  it  has  been  pointed 
out  and  which  it  is  well  to  reiterate,  resulting  from  the  con 
fusion  of  ethical  and  scientific  principles)  are  biologically 
fallacious,  and  impossible  of  attainment.  We  can  never  make 
the  Negro  like  the  white  man  mentally.  We  can  never  have 
a  bi-racial  state  based  upon  an  identity  of  ideas  and  political 
philosophies  in  both  races. 

The  Negroes  will  continue  to  progress,  undoubtedly.  But 
they  will  progress  along  the  lines  laid  down  by  their  evolu 
tionary  history.  They  will  take  our  cultural  elements  and 
make  them  part  of  themselves;  but  they  will  modify  these 
elements  according  to  their  nature,  and  when  they  have  assim 
ilated  them,  they  will  be  our  cultural  elements  no  longer, 
but  will  be  profoundly  and  permanently  modified.  The  two 
races  will  continue  to  develop  side  by  side,  but  the  develop 
ment  can  never  be  parallel — it  must  be  divergent,  even  though 
its  successive  steps  may  perchance  maintain  approximately  the 
same  level,  as  long  as  the  races  remain  pure.  It  will  be  like 
two  men,  thrown  together  by  fortuitous  circumstances,  who 
start  walking  up  the  same  slope  toward  the  same  hill-top; 
but  because  of  differences  in  the  nature  of  their  interests,  one 
goes  east  while  the  other  goes  northeast;  each  step  will  carry 
them  closer  to  the  top  of  the  hill,  but  further  and  further 
apart. 

This  fact,  rather  than  ethical  theory,  should  form  the 
foundation  of  American  thought  in  regard  to  the  Negroes 
and  the  Negro  problem.  The  Negro  as  an  intellectual  being 
should  be  studied  as  a  Negro — not  as  a  potential  white-man; 
and  if  we  wish  to  help  him,  we  should  at  least  try  to  be  sure 
that  he  is  allowed  to  develop  as  a  Negro  in  the  freest,  broad 
est  manner  possible,  and  to  the  full  extent  of  his  racial  po 
tentialities. 


332  SELECTED   ARTICLES 


PRACTICAL  APPLICATION  OF  CHRISTIANITY 
TO  THE  AMERICAN  RACE  PROBLEM  l 

I^QBLJJiay_wg_appjy  this  doctrine  to  the  present  American 
Negro 'problem? 

In  the  first  place,  let  us  judge  the  Negro  fairly.  Negroes 
are  misjudged  more,  probably,  than  any  other  class  of  people, 
owing  in  large  part  to  the  powerful  race  prejudice.  The  Ne 
gro  is  charged  with  being  vicious  and  dangerous,  and  Negro 
criminals  and  crime  are  cited  to  prove  the  charge.  This  is  all 
wrong.  While  statistics  show  a  greater  percentage  of  Negro 
criminals  than  white,  yet  the  proportion  in  either  race  is  far 
too  small  to  be  characteristic.  Why  not  say  that  the  Negro  is 
an  energetic,  progressive,  law-abiding  race,  and  cite  as  proof 
the  best  of  his  race?  This  would  be  more  just  to  the  Negro, 
and  yet  it  would  not  be  a  fair  estimate.  Any  race  should  be 
judged  not  alone  by  its  best  qualities  or  its  worst  traits;  not 
only  by  its  best  or  its  worst  members;  but  by  a  fair  average. 
The  exception  should  not  be  made  the  rule.  The  Negro  race 
should  be  judged  with  consideration  for  its  virtues  and  pa 
tience  with  its  faults.  The  good  Negro  can  in  no  way  justly 
be  held  responsible  for  the  misdeeds  of  the  worst  of  his  race. 
All  Negroes  are  not  alike;  there  are  good,  bad,  and  indiffer 
ent  Negroes,  just  as  there  are  different  types  of  white  men, 
and  justice  would  demand  that  the  Negro  be  considered  not 
merely  as  a  member  of  a  different  race,  but  as  an  individual. 
The  average  Negro  is  industrious  and  law-abiding,  and  he, 
not  the  exceptional  cases,  should  be  taken  as  a  fair  sample  of 
the  race.  Let  us  always  remember  the  Divine  warning: 
"Judge  not  lest  ye  be  judged." 

In  the  second  place,  we  should  take  steps  to  remedy  the 
conditions  under  which  the  Negro  population  is  living.  The 
part  played  by  the  white  race  in  the  spread  of  Negro  crime 
and  pauperism  should  not  pass  unnoticed.  The  dive,  the  re 
sort,  the  saloon,  poverty,  ignorance,  and  unsanitary  conditions 
are  the  great  breeders  of  crime  among  all  races.  And  yet 
these  influences  exist  in  practically  every  community.  Espe 
cially  do  they  tend  to  develop  Negro  criminals.  As  a  result 
of  discrimination,  competition,  and  of  their  own  inefficiency, 

1  By  William  Burkholder,  Marion,  Kans.  Kansas  University  News- 
Bulletin.  14:  no.  5,  p.  3S-S8. 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  333 

there  is  more  idleness  proportionately  among  the  Negro  labor 
ers  than  among  white.  Idleness,  in  itself  a  dangerous  condi 
tion,  always  breeds  evil.  Under  existing  conditions,  the  Negro 
is  driven  for  social  life  and  amusement  to  frequent  resorts 
run  by  other  Negroes,  often  by  whites.  Political  interests  and 
neglect  on  the  part  of  the  public  allow  such  proprietors  to  op 
erate  with  impunity.  Negro  crime  is  inevitable  under  these 
circumstances. 

Were  the  Golden  Rule  applied,  such  evils  might  largely  be 
abolished  and  the  condition  of  the  Negro  bettered.  Every 
Negro  would  be  given  a  free  man's  right  to  work  for  his  liv 
ing  and  be  paid  according  to  his  talents  and  industry.  Profit 
able  and  elevating  amusements  would  be  provided  for  his  lei 
sure  hours ;  he  would  not  be  driven  to  frequent  dives  and  re 
sorts.  Or  better  still,  there  would  be  no  such  places  to  fre 
quent.  By  enforcement  of  sanitary  laws,  intelligent  charity, 
and  justice  in  the  matter  of  employment,  much  poverty,  dis 
ease,  and  crime  could  be  avoided. 

Education  is  essential  for  the  proper  solution  of  the  prob 
lem,  but  this  alone  will  only  increase  the  unpleasantness  of 
the  Negro's  position.  Unless  he  be  allowed  to  make  full  use 
of  his  education  and  training,  it  has  been  more  than  a  waste 
of  time  and  money.  Without  opportunity,  the  best  education 
is  of  no  practical  value.  We  should  be  great  enough  to  over 
look  such  a  superficial  thing  as  an  uncertain  and  unfounded 
color  line  and  regard  the  Negro  not  merely  as  a  Negro,  but 
as  a  man.  If  he  is  a  good,  wise,  and  able  man,  his  talents 
and  character  should  be  given  full  opportunity  to  develop  and 
work. 

If  we  are  the  superior  race,  our  example  must  be  of  con 
siderable  influence  with  those  who  must  look  to  us  as  lead 
ers.  Our  attitude  toward  the  Negro  will  very  largely  deter 
mine  his  attitude  toward  us.  If  we  have  consideration  for  his 
rights  and  feelings,  we  can  then  reasonably  expect  to  receive 
the  same  treatment  in  return.  Today  we  may  well  continue 
the  practice  of  Jefferson  Davis,  who,  being  asked  why  he  was 
always  so  careful  to  return  in  kind  the  respectful,  friendly 
greetings  of  Negroes  whom  he  chanced  to  meet,  replied:  "I 
can't  allow  any  Negro  to  outdo  me  in  courtesy."  And  Jeffer 
son  Davis  was  at  that  time  United  States  Senator  from 
Mississippi. 


334  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

This  example,  common  in  the  old  South,  may  account  for 
the  proverbial  respectfulness  and  politeness  of  the  old 
Southern  Negroes:  the  lack  of  such  examples  today  may  ex 
plain  the  reputed  disrespect  and  insolence  of  the  present  Ne 
gro  generation.  Before  a  member  of  the  "superior"  race 
treats  any  Negro  uncivilly,  he  may  well  stop  and  recall  the 
Divine  command  "Love  thy  neighbor  as  thyself."  And  he 
should  remember  that  most  treatment  is  returned  in  kind; 
and  that  a  gentleman  is  usually  treated  as  such,  and  vice 
versa. 

Every  human  being  has  a  right  to  the  fullest  enjoyment  of 
life.  Any  unkind  act,  word,  or  treatment  that  will  in  any  way 
detract  from  honest,  healthful  pleasure  is  a  violation  of  a 
right  as  sacred  as  the  right  to  hold  property.  Yet  the  cases 
of  unhappiness  caused  unoffending  Negroes  by  insult,  neglect, 
coldness,  and  race  hatred  at  the  hands  of  whites,  are  of  count 
less  occurrence.  The  most  respectable  Negro  can  scarcely 
venture  into  a  public  place  without  receiving  some  cowardly 
reminder  of  his  color  and  status.  That  this  is  of  daily  oc 
currence  is  undeniable;  that  it  is  wrong  is  unquestionable. 
Such  treatment  is  not  in  accordance  with  our  democracy  or 
Christianity.  It  should  never  have  to  be  said  of  any  Chris 
tian  gentleman  that  he  had  voluntarily  marred  the  happiness 
of  any  of  our  dark-skinned  fellow-citizens,  simply  because  of 
race  feelings.  Far  be  it  from  any  honorable  person  to  cast  a 
shadow  over  a  happy  soul  by  any  inconsiderate  action  or  re 
mark. 

In  the  foregoing  discussion,  the  means  suggested  for  ap 
plying  the  principles  of  Christianity  to  the  Negro  problem 
have  been:  (i)  by  judging  the  Negro  fairly;  (2)  by  better 
ing  the  conditions  under  which  he  lives,  thus  doing  away  with 
pauperism  and  crime;  (3)  by  insuring  him  intelligent  and  use 
ful  education,  which  will  increase  his  industrial  efficiency;  (4) 
by  giving  him  opportunity  to  show  his  individual  ability, 
judging  him  as  a  man,  not  as  a  member  of  a  race;  (5)  by 
setting  him  a  good  example;  (6)  by  considerate  and  courte 
ous  treatment;  and  (7)  by  overcoming  instinctive  racial  prej 
udice  and  treating  the  Negro  with  justice  and  charity.  Pa 
tience  and  the  Golden  Rule  are  the  only  solution  of  the  prob 
lem.  Force,  law,  and  agitation  can  do  nothing  but  make  a 
bad  matter  worse.  It  is  certainly  unfortunate  that  such  a 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  335 

problem  exists,  but'  we  should  not  forget  who  is  responsible 
for  the  Negro's  presence  in  the  United  States.  We  must 
solve  the  problem  in  some  way;  and  why  not  solve  it  to  the 
advantage  of  both  races?  Time,  patience,  and  the  Golden 
Rule — these  alone  can  bring  about  a  happy  solution  of  an  un 
happy  problem.  If  we  are  a  Christian  nation,  making  great 
efforts  at  the  Christianization  of  heathendom,  why  do  we  not 
apply  in  our  own  land  the  doctrines  which  we  are  so  zealous 
ly  spreading? 


AN    OBJECT-LESSON    IN    THE    SOLUTION    OF 
RACE  PROBLEMS  1 

Meeting  at  Jamaica  "all  sorts  and  conditions  of  men"  un 
der  favoring  circumstances  gave  unusual  facilities  for  obser 
vation,  and  for  arriving  at  just  conclusions. 

The  first  impression  so  derived  was  of  the  absolute  justice 
obtaining!  as  between  the  white  race  and  the  Colored.  This 
was  apparent  in  many  ways.  In  fact,  the  white  officials,  in  ad 
judging  the  colored  people,  were  like  the  old  Indian  who 
stood  up  so  straight  that  he  leaned  over  backward.  An  Eng 
lish  resident,  a  justice  of  the  peace,  said  that  if  a  white  man 
and  a  colored  were  brought  before  him  for  similar  offenses, 
in  case  of  conviction  he  inflicted  a  severer  penalty  upon  the 
white  man,  for  the  reason  that  he  was  presumed  to  know  his 
duty  better  than  the  colored  man,  and  was  deemed  to  have 
offended  against  greater  light. 

In  reading  the  various  newspapers,  in  attendance  at  court 
and  at  the  legislative  council  of  the  island,  and  in  conversa 
tion  generally,  it  was  nowhere  observed  or  charged  that  the 
colored  race  was  discriminated  against.  As  the  Colonial  Sec 
retary  said,  "Every  man  on  this  island  has  absolutely  an 
equal  chance." 

Another  impression  was  of  the  mutual  consideration  and 
courtesy  exhibited  by  and  between  the  races.  Most  of  the 
principal  wholesale  and  department  stores,  as  well  as  the 
smaller  ones,  and  the  shops,  are  owned  or  managed  by  colored 
people.  It  was  extremely  rare  to  find  a  white  clerk  anywhere. 

1  From  article  by  Frank  Jewett  Mather.  Arena.  36:364-9.  October, 
1906. 


336  SELECTED   ARTICLES  ' 

In  the  largest  wholesale  and  retail  drug  house  in  Kingston, 
apparently  no  white  person  was  interested  or  employed,  and 
there  seemed  to  be  as  high  a  degree  of  skill  and  care  as 
would  be  shown  in  any  similar  store  in  any  of  our  cities. 

In  the  Legislative  Council,  which  is  charged  substantially 
with  the  conduct  of  affairs  of  the  whole  island,  a  majority  of 
the  elected  men  were  colored,  many  of  them  of  the  deepest 
black ;  of  all  the  members,  nominated  or  elected,  by  common 
consent  by  far  the  ablest  speaker  was  a  black  man,  with  dis 
tinctively  the  features  of  the  Negro.  The  Governor,  always 
presiding  at  the  Council,  surrounded  by  the  Colonial  Secre 
tary,  the  Director  of  Public  Works,  the  Superintendent  of 
Public  Instruction,  and  other  officials,  listened  and  made  reply 
to  the  black  members  with  the  same  patience  and  courtesy 
that  he  did  to  the  most  eminent  white  men. 

There  were  no  "Jim  Crow"  cars,  either  on  electric  lines 
or  steam  railroads.  Black  men  and  women  with  their  parcels 
rode  with  the  whites,  side  by  side,  on  every  seat,  and  I  did 
not  see  the  slightest  shrug  of  the  shoulders  or  sign  of  dis 
pleasure.  Many  of  the  large  plantations  are  owned  and  man 
aged  by  the  blacks,  some  of  whom  are  capitalists  worth  a 
half  million  of  dollars.  The  absence  of  crime  and  violence 
was  noticeable.  The  records  state  that  there  has  never  been 
a  case  of  assault  upon  a  white  woman  by  a  black  man  or  col 
ored,  and  there  is  no  place  on  the  island  where  a  white  wo 
man  can  not  go  alone,  night  or  day,  with  absolute  impunity. 
No  instance  of  lynching  of  anyone  could  be  found.  The  ab 
sence  of  churlishness,  of  jealousy,  on  the  part  of  the  colored 
people  was  noticeable.  "Morning,  master,"  "Morning,  mis 
sus"  ;  and  it  was  fine  to  note  the  gratification  expressed  when 
the  salutation  was  equally  cordially  returned. 

The  editors  of  the  leading  newspapers  were  colored  men, 
and  they  proved  agreeable  and  instructive.  The  police  were 
exclusively  colored,  generally  black,  and,  in  their  white  jack 
ets,  wearing  white  helmets  and  red  sashes,  were  picturesque. 
They  were  very  courteous  and  efficient.  They  make  the 
rounds  of  their  district  at  regular  intervals,  inquire  at  each 
house  if  there  is  any  complaint  to  be  made.  If  any  is  made, 
it  is  entered  in  a  book,  and  each  householder  signs  his  own 
complaint,  or  a  statement  that  he  has  none  to  make.  During 
our  stay,  not  the  slightest  criticism  of  the  police  was  heard, 


THE   NEGRO   PROBLEM  337 

or  the  least  hint  of  corruption.  We  were  assured  on  every 
hand  that  the  government  of  the  island  is  free  from  graft ; 
that  while  personal  influence  might  play  some  part,  money 
corruption,  or  anything  like  it,  was  wholly  unknown.  The 
"Budget"  of  the  island  is  open  to  every  one,  and  is  explicit 
in  detail.  A  large  volume,  resembling  a  modern  atlas,  of 
about  one  hundred  fifty  printed  pages,  containing  com 
plete  tabulated  columns  of  proposed  expenditures,  and  under 
each  heading  a  carefully  detailed  list  of  items,  was  placed 
before  every  member  of  the  Council.  Attention  was  called 
by  the  Governor  to  every  page,  with  inquiry  whether  any  item 
was  objectionable.  Sometimes  a  page  would  be  turned  with 
out  remark;  at  other  times  a  single  page  would  be  under  dis 
cussion  for  days  in  open  Council.  The  criticisms  were  pub 
lished  in  the  daily  papers,  so  that  every  one  could  be  informed 
about  the  various  proposed  disbursements. 

There  are  fine  scholars  and  accomplished  professional  men 
among  the  colored  people. 

In  looking  over  society  as  we  found  it,  we  could  but  ad 
mire  the  just,  impartial  administration  of  law,  the  self-respect 
ing  good-will  reciprocally  shown  between  the  races,  the  com 
parative  absence  of  public  lawlessness,  in  such  marked  contrast 
with  similar  race  conditions  in  our  own  land;  the  uptrend  of 
a  race,  which,  still  having  far  to  go,  has  gone  far,  and  is  evi 
dently  going  farther. 

The  evolution  of  the  colored  race  in  Jamaica,  and  that  of 
the  whites  in  their  relation  to  them,  is  wonderfully  like  that 
of  both  races  in  our  own  South,  and  the  stock  arguments  and 
theories  of  Southern  whites,  deprecatory  of  the  colored  people, 
have  all  been  made  and  advocated,  and  triumphantly  answered, 
in  Jamaica. 

The  local  government  of  Jamaica  entirely  ignored  the  freed 
men  after  their  emancipation,  and  made  no  effort  to  train 
them  as  citizens.  The  planters  stood  proudly  aloof  and  de 
clined  to  recognize  the  changed  and  improved  conditions  of 
the  blacks,  and  treated  them  in  a  manner  which  engendered 
keen  antagonism.  The  legislation  was  primarily  in  the  inter 
est  of  the  whites,  and  had  practically  no  reference  to  that  of 
the  great  body  of  the  people.  The  whites  organized  and  main 
tained  an  exclusive  body,  dealing  with  public  matters  for  their 
own  exclusive  advantage,  wilfully  disregarding  the  rights  of 


338  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

the  blacks.  Such  conduct  of  affairs  culminated  in  the  Eyer 
rebellion  in  1865.  It  is  needless  to  draw  further  parallel.  It 
was  from  the  date  of  that  rebellion  that  the  progress  of  the 
freed  men  began.  An  imperial  dictator  was  sent  out,  instruct 
ed  to  care  for  the  people  in  mass,  without  discrimination;  a 
new  fiscal  system  was  created ;  positive  reforms  were  affected 
in  all  departments;  and  efficient  police  were  installed;  a  better 
judiciary  was  established;  prison  methods  were  reformed;  bet 
ter  sanitary  laws  were  enacted;  public  works  were  organized; 
education  was  cared  for,  and  taxes  were  considerably  re 
mitted. 

The  arrival  of  the  dictator  was  the  signal  for  the  political 
retirement  of  the  planters,  who  never  emerged  therefrom. 
The  Crown  government  had  reconstructed  the  colony.  The 
whites  chafed  under  the  rigorous,  impartial  rule;  the  blacks 
were  contented  and  satisfied,  and  are  today  the  strongest  ad 
herents  to  that  government.  In  the  absence  of  formulated 
convictions,  the  intuitions  serve  well  the  great  body  of  the 
colored  race,  and  they  cling  to  Crown-colonial  government 
with  unshaken  tenacity. 

In  looking  over  a  society  so  novel  in  its  political  and  social 
aspects,  it  was  natural  to  seek  for  the  causes  which  had  pro 
duced  such  results. 

First  in  order  and  importance  appeared  the  long-continued, 
intelligent,  patient,  religious,  missionary  work,  which  has  been 
carried  on  for  generations.  While  that  work  had  much  to 
encounter,  it  nevertheless  made  a  lasting  and  substantial  im 
pression  and  laid  an  assured  foundation  for  the  work  of  the 
secular  law.  The  fact  of  such  work,  and  its  influence  upon 
the  civilization  of  the  island,  was  universally  recognized  by 
the  thoughtful  and  well-informed. 

Another  potent  factor  was  the  just,  impartial  administration 
of  the  laws.  It  was  more  and  more  evident  that  the  normal 
solution  of  all  race  problems  is  simpler  than  is  generally  sup 
posed;  it  is  found  in  justice,  intelligently,  impartially  adminis 
tered.  The  wisdom,  as  well  as  fairness,  of  intrusting  a  con 
siderable  share  of  the  administration  of  law  to  the  blacks 
themselves,  was  amply  vindicated.  A  colored  man  policing 
the  city  is  ever  upon  his  honor,  and  stimulated  by  his  pride, 
to  more  vigilantly  protect  the  community  against  his  own  race; 
while  colored  people  more  willingly  obey  the  law  which  they 
themselves  are  set  to  uphold.  No  suspicion  of  partiality,  or 


THE  NEGRO   PROBLEM  339 

racial  hostility  to  law  officers,  can  live  in  such  a  situation. 
The  effect  of  such  conditions  extends  far  beyond  the  immedi 
ate  contacts  of  the  people  with  the  authorities,  even  to  a  gen 
eral  mental  and  moral  stimulus.  It  is  an  object-lesson  of  op 
portunity;  an  incitement  to  effort;  a  positive  factor  in  the  de 
velopment  of  character. 

Contrast  such  a  government  with  that  in  our  own  Southern 
States,  where  practically  no  outside  interference  is  permis 
sible,  and  where  the  colored  race  are  substantially  at  the 
mercy  of  local  interests,  prejudice  and  antipathies,  restricted 
in  force  and  direction  only  by  local  law.  Until  the  withdrawal 
of  the  Federal  troops  from  the  South,  there  was  a  very  modi 
fied  similar  restraining  force.  Whatever  the  necessity,  politi 
cally,  for  such  withdrawal,  undoubtedly  it  set  back  many  years 
the  development  of  the  colored  people,  and  set  in  motion  and 
encouraged  a  current  of  hostile  influences  against  which  it  is, 
and  for  a  long  time  will  be,  hard  for  a  disfavored  race  to 
make  headway.  We  went  to  Jamaica  with  decided  prejudice 
against  the  English  colonial  systems — we  left  it  with  regret 
that  we  had  not  some  similar  administration  in  parts  of  our 
own  land,  and  with  many  queries  whether  our  Federal  gov 
ernment  would  not  have  to  come  more  and  more  in  play  in 
the  respective  States  as  an  indispensable  counterpoise  to 
otherwise  uncontrollable  local  interests,  wrongs  and  antip 
athies. 

As  I  read  history,  reflect  upon  the  inspired  utterances,  ob 
serve  the  trend  of  opinion  and  the  tendencies  of  affairs,  I 
cannot  but  think,  hope  and  believe,  that  He  who  has  ordained 
justice,  who  loves  mercy  and  delights  in  equality  of  opportun 
ity,  will  yet  bring  about  all  over  the  earth  an  equal  chance  for 
these  dusky  men  and  women,  and  an  equal  development  of 
these  children  of  the  night. 


RACE  PROBLEM  * 

Recognizing  that  the  Negro  is  a  permanent  and  increasing 
ly  important  factor  in  the  development  of  our  National  life, 
the  Southern  Sociological  Congress  considers  the  solution  of 
the  problem  of  race  relations  as  the  most  delicate  and  difficult 

1  Outlook.    123:44-5.    September   10,   1919. 


340  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

single  task  for  American  democracy.  We  believe  that  no 
enduring  basis  of  good-will  between  the  white  and  colored 
peoples  in  this  country  can  be  developed  except  on  the  funda 
mental  principles  of  justice,  cooperation  and  race  integrity. 
The  obligations  of  this  generation  to  posterity  demand  that 
we  exert  our  utmost  endeavor  to  preserve  the  purity  of  our 
democratic  ideals  expressed  in  the  American  Constitution  as 
well  as  the  purity  of  the  blood  of  both  races.  With  this  be 
lief  the  Southern  Sociological  Congress  has  worked  out  a 
program  for  the  improvement  of  race  relations  which  we 
respectfully  submit  to  this  Conference  of  Governors  in  the 
earnest  hope  that  this  body  of  distinguished  leaders  may  lend 
its  powerful  influence  toward  making  this  program  effective 
throughout  the  Union. 

The  program  is : 

First,  that  the  Negro  should  be  liberated  from  the  blight 
ing  fear  of  injustice  and  mob  violence.  To  this  end  it  is  im 
peratively  urgent  that  lynching  be  prevented: 

1.  By  the   enlistment   of    Negroes   themselves   in  preventing 
crimes  that  provoke  mob  violence. 

2.  By  prompt  trial  and  speedy    execution    of    persons    who 
are  guilty  of  heinous  crimes. 

3.  By   legislation   that  will   make   it   unnecessary   for  a   wo 
man  who  has  been    assaulted    to    appear    in    court    to    testify 
publicly. 

4.  By   legislation   that   will    give   the   Governor   authority   to 
dismiss  a  sheriff  for     failure     to     protect     a     prisoner     in    his 
charge. 

Second,  that  the  citizenship  rights  of  the  Negro  should  be 
safeguarded,  particularly : 

1.  By   securing  proper  traveling  accommodations. 

2.  By  providing  better  housing  conditions  and  by  preventing 
extortionate   rents. 

3.  By    providing    adequate    educational    and    recreation    fa 
cilities. 

Third,  that  closer  cooperation  between  white  and  colored 
citizens  should  be  promoted  (without  encouraging  any  viola 
tion  of  race  integrity)  : 

i.  By  organizing  local  committees,  both  white  and  colored 
in  as  many  communities  as  possible  for  the  consideration  of 
inter-racial  problems. 


THE  NEGRO   PROBLEM  341 

2.  By  the'  employment  of  Negro  physicians,  nurses,  and  po 
licemen    as    far    as    practicable    in    work    for    sanitation,    public, 
health   and   law   enforcement   among   their   own   people. 

3.  By  enlisting    all    agencies    possible    in    fostering    justice, 
good-will,    and   kindliness    in    all    individual    dealings    of   mem 
bers  of  one  race  with  members  of  the  other. 

4.  By  the  appointment  of    a    standing    commission    by    the 
Governor  of   each   state   for   the  purpose   of   making  a  careful 
study  of  the  causes  underlying  race  friction,  with  the  view  of 
recommending  proper   means   for  their   removal. 

In  addition  to  the  standing  commissions  proposed  in  the 
foregoing  program  there  should  be  a  National  commission 
appointed  by  the  President  to  serve  as  a  unifying  body  to  co 
ordinate  the  work  of  the  several  State  commissions  here  pro 
posed.  The  work  of  the  National  Commission  should  in  no 
way  be  permitted  to  conflict  with  the  State  commissions  and 
local  committees  proposed  in  the  program  of  the  Southern 
Sociological  Congress.  The  National  Commission  should  work 
with  and  through  the  State  commissions  rather  than  as  a  su 
pervising  and  superior  body. 


WHITE  MAN'S  DEBT  TO  THE  NEGRO1 

Here  in  the  South,  as  elsewhere,  the  stability  of  civilization 
is  to  be  measured  by  the  condition  of  the  masses  of  our  work 
ing  people.  Men  of  all  nations  have  been  prone  to  think  that 
enduring  national  strength  can  be  built  up  on  rottenness ;  that 
national  and  industrial  life  can  be  broad-based  and  firm 
though  it  rest  on  injustice  to  the  poor  and  the  despised,  on 
ignorance,  immorality,  inefficiency,  disease ;  that  the  great 
huddled  mass  of  workers  can  be  safely  exploited  and  then  ig 
nored ;  that  a  people  may  defy  the  fundamental  law  of  human 
life  and  prosper.  So,  from  the  beginning,  have  nations  fallen ; 
until,  at  last,  men  began  to  learn.  In  the  old  world  and  in 
the  new  we  are  moving  slowly,  along  much-lauded  paths  of 
science,  to  that  ignored  simplicity  of  Jesus  Christ,  whose  word 
of  human  brotherhood  we  have  forgotten. 

Here  in  the  South  we  are  moving  too.     Some  of  our  best 

1  From  article  by  L.  H.  Hammond,  Paine  College,  Augusta,  Ga.  An 
nals  of  the  American  Academy.  49:67-73.  September,  1913. 


342  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

are  turning  to  serve  our  neediest.  In  Louisville,  Ky.,  is  a 
man,  the  son  of  an  Alabama  banker,  a  man  of  substance  and 
family,  who  is  conducting  settlement  work  for  Negroes,  serv 
ing  them  in  the  same  ways  that  other  college-bred  men  and 
women  serve  folk  of  other  races  in  the  same  economic  class 
elsewhere.  One  of  the  International  Y.  M.  C.  A.  secretaries,  a 
Southern  man,  has  enrolled  six  thousand  young  men  in  our 
Southern  colleges  to  study  the  white  man's  debt  to  the  Negro; 
and  another  Southern  secretary  is  following  up  the  work  by 
organizing  these  young  men  for  social  service  among  Ne 
groes.  The  Southern  University  Commission  on  the  Negro, 
an  outgrowth  of  the  first  Southern  Sociological  Congress, 
held  a  year  ago,  is  composed  of  men  both  young  and  old  from 
every  Southern  state  university,  who  are  agreed  as  to  the  duty 
of  the  favored  race  to  secure  justice  and  opportunity  for  the 
backward  one.  The  Woman's  Missionary  Council  of  the 
Southern  Methodist  Church,  an  organization  representing  over 
two  hundred  thousand  of  our  white  women,  recently  adopted 
a  plan  for  cooperation  between  their  own  local  societies,  some 
four  thousand  in  number,  and  the  better  class  of  Negroes,  for 
the  uplift  of  the  poorer  classes,  locally,  throughout  the  South. 
Through  their  secretary  for  Negro  work  efforts  in  this  direc 
tion  are  already  being  made  at  several  points.  The  Southern 
Baptists  have  still  more  recently  decided  to  open  a  theological 
seminary  for  Negro  preachers.  It  is  to  be  in  connection  with 
their  seminary  for  white  preachers,  and  the  same  man,  one  of 
their  most  honored  leaders,  is  to  be  the  head  of  both  institu 
tions.  The  Southern  Presbyterians  have  long  had  a  theologi 
cal  seminary  for  Negroes,  where  Southern  white  college  men 
have  taught  their  darker  brothers.  In  South  Carolina  white 
members  of  the  Episcopal  church,  both  men  and  women,  are 
giving  their  personal  service  to  the  Negroes.  The  Southern 
Methodists  have  for  thirty  years  maintained  a  school  for  the 
higher  education  of  the  race  where  college-bred  Southern 
white  men  and  women  have  taught  from  the  beginning.  The 
Southern  Educational  Association  has  been  on  record  for  sev 
eral  years  as  favoring  the  teaching  of  Negro  normal  students 
by  Southern  whites;  and  the  work  of  a  man  like  the  Virginia 
state  superintendent  of  Negro  rural  schools  is  something  for 
both  races  to  be  thankful  for.  Southern  club  women,  too,  in 
more  than  one  state,  are  showing  both  by  word  and  deed  a 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  343 

spirit  of  sympathy  with  the  Negro  life  in  their  midst.  Among 
the  many  encouraging  and  inspiring  utterances  by  both  whites 
and  blacks  at  the  recent  meeting  of  the  Southern  Sociological 
Congress  in  Atlanta  no  single  speech  summed  up  the  race  sit 
uation  as  did  that  of  a  young  Negro  on  the  closing  night. 

"I  have  always  known,"  he  said,  "that  the  old  Southern 
white  man  understood  and  trusted  the  old  Negro,  and  that  the 
old  Negro  understood  and  trusted  the  old  Southern  white 
man;  but  before  this  congress  I  never  dreamed  that  the  young 
Southern  white  man  and  the  young  Negro  could  ever  under 
stand  or  trust  one  another;  and  now  I  know  they  can;  and 
that  shoulder  to  shoulder,  each  in  his  own  place,  they  can 
work  out  together  the  good  of  their  common  country." 

In  all  the  congress,  no  speech  won  from  the  white  people 
heartier  applause  than  this.  But  the  white  men  who  spoke, 
college  professors,  lawyers,  business  men,  preachers,  had  their 
audience  with  them  also,  as  they  called  for  justice  and 
brotherhood  and  service  in  the  spirit  of  Christ. 

The  millennium  is  probably  far  to  seek;  but  vision  is  com 
ing  to  our  leaders — a  vision  of  human  oneness  under  all  ra 
cial  separateness,  of  human  service  fitted  to  human  need. 
And  as  the  leaders  are,  the  people  will  be.  When  even  one 
man  sees  truth  its  ultimate  triumph  is  always  assured.  What 
ever  may  happen  in  between,  the  final  issue  is  inevitable. 


THE  SOUTH  TAKING  UP  THE  PROBLEM  1 

In  the  South  the  older  generation  of  white  people,  with  its 
traditions  and  animosities,  is  passing  away,  and  there  are 
many  signs  that  a  few  men  of  the  younger  generation  are 
seriously  turning  their  attention  to  the  "everlasting  problem." 
Where  the  older  generation  was  merely  reactionary,  dreaming 
of  the  repeal  of  the  Fifteenth  Amendment,  or  discussing  "ex 
portation,"  "territorial  segregation,"  "extermination,"  and  other 
wholesale  or  theoretical  remedies,  the  new  generation  is  plain 
ly,  if  a  little  hopelessly  at  the  start,  taking  up  the  "white  man's 
burden"  and  seeking  to  look  at  the  whole  .subject  construc 
tively.  Several  different  movements  are  under  way.  One  has 

1  From  article,  Gathering  Clouds  Along  the  Color  Line,  by  Ray  Stan- 
nard  Baker.  World's  Work.  32:232-6.  June,  1916. 


344  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

been  organized  through  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.,  under  the  direction  of 
an  earnest  Southern  white  man,  Mr.  W.  D.  Weatherford,  and 
has  taken  the  form  of  study  classes  among  the  students  of  the 
colleges  and  universities.  There  was  a  time  when  the 
Southerner  thought  there  was  nothing  for  him  to  learn  about 
the  Negro  or  the  race  problem,  and  that  was  a  hopeless  time, 
but  the  new  spirit  in  the  colleges  takes  the  opposite  view. 

Another  movement,  also  originating  among  the  more 
thoughtful  class  of  Southerners,  and  largely  in  the  colleges, 
began  with  the  University  Commission  on  Race  Questions, 
composed  of  representatives  from  eleven  Southern  states, 
which  held  a  meeting  at  Nashville,  in  May,  1912.  It  was  fol 
lowed  in  August,  1913,  by  the  still  more  important  Southern 
Sociological  Congress  which  met  in  Atlanta  and  conducted  the 
most  impressive  discussions  of  the  Negro  question  ever  held 
in  the  South.  The  president  of  the  Congress  was  Governor 
Mann  of  Virginia,  and  some  of  the  ablest  white  men  of  the 
South  took  part  in  the  proceedings.  The  addresses  on  the 
Negro  question,  bound  together  in  a  small  book  with  the  sig 
nificant  title,  "The  Human  Way,"  mark  a  new  departure  in 
the  Southern  attitude  toward  the  Negro.  Dr.  James  H.  Dil- 
lard,  of  New  Orleans,  struck  the  keynote  of  the  present  situa 
tion  among  the  best  white  people  of  the  South  when  he  said: 

"Let  us  be  glad  that  what  may  be  called  the  post-recon 
struction  period  seems  at  last  to  be  drawing  to  a  close. 

"This  is  the  truth  which  I  wish  to  emphasize  at  this  time. 
I  sincerely  believe  that  the  day  of  better  feeling  is  at  hand. 
I  believe  that  the  day  has  come  when  we  shall,  if  I  may  say 
so,  start  over  again  and  develop  right  relations  in  the  right  way. 
We  Southern  white  people  now  realize  two  facts  in  regard 
to  the  relationship  of  the  races.  First,  we  realize  that  the  old 
relationship,  so  frequently  typified  in  the  affection  of  the  black 
mammy,  is  one  that  must  pass.  Second,  we  realize  that  the 
spirit  of  no  relationship,  no  responsibility,  no  cooperation,  is 
impossible.  We  see  that  our  whole  public  welfare  requires 
the  education  and  improvement  of  the  colored  people  in  our 
midst.  We  ^see  that  public  health  depends  on  common  efforts 
between  the  races.  We  see  that  the  prosperity  of  these 
Southern  States  is  conditioned  on  greater  intelligence  among 
the  masses  of  all  the  people.  We  see  that  every  consideration 
of  justice  and  righteousness  demands  our  good-will,  our  help 
ful  guidance  .  .  .  and  our  cooperation." 


THE   NEGRO   PROBLEM  345 

Another  evidence  of  the  changing  sentiment  of  the  white 
people  is  the  tendency  toward  the  gradual  assumption  of  the 
obligation,  so  long  borne  partly  by  Northern  philanthropy,  of 
the  burden  of  Negro  education.  The  movement,  while  very 
slow,  seems  genuine.  White  supervisors  of  Negro  schools  are 
a  new  development  in  Southern  education,  and  the  fact  that 
Negro  leaders,  like  Dr.  Washington  was,  can  speak  frankly — 
often  with  Southern  white  men  on  the  platform — of  the  need 
and  value  of  Negro  education,  indicates  a  wider  popular  ac 
ceptance  of  the  idea  that  safety  lies  only  in  universal  educa 
tion.  Compulsory  education  is  now  being  seriously  considered 
for  the  first  time  in  at  least  two  Southern  states.  Some  of 
the  Negro  colleges  and  the  teachers  in  them  also  report  an  in 
creasing  friendliness  among  white  people  toward  them. 

While  these  movements  are  confined  to  the  highest  type  of 
Southern  people,  mostly  educational  leaders  who  do  not  meet 
directly  the  problems  of  economic  or  political  competition, 
they  are  influencing  those  centers  of  thought  where  public 
opinion  originates.  Whether  they  are  strong  enough  or  can 
travel  fast  enough  to  meet  the  increasing  friction  between  the 
races  is  still  an  open  question.  That  they  have  not  yet  really 
influenced  the  masses  of  Southern  white  people  is  indicated 
in  various  ways — by  the  failure  to  check  lynchings,  by  the  con 
tinued  pressure  for  discriminatory  laws,  by  the  hostility  to 
Negro  education,  and  by  the  election  to  office  of  leaders  who 
have  made  their  reactionary  position  on  the  Negro  question 
the  foundation  of  their  political  existence.  The  pressure  of 
Southern  Congressmen  for  more  discriminatory  legislation 
against  Negroes  is  a  clear  indication  of  the  hostile  popular 
sentiment  in  the  South. 

Another  strong  conservative  force  is  the  wise  leadership 
of  such  men  as  Dr.  H.  B.  Frissell,  of  Hampton  Institute,  who 
stand  as  mediating  statesmen  between  the  two  races.  One 
who  studies  the  Southern  situation  will  be  surprised  to  dis 
cover  how  many  of  the  constructive  and  hopeful  organizations 
in  the  South,  both  white  and  colored,  have  had  their  origin 
in  what  may  be  called  the  Hampton  group,  which  has  had  for 
its  two  great  fundamental  purposes  the  training  of  wise  Ne 
gro  leaders  (of  whom  Booker  T.  Washington  and  Major  Mo- 
ton,  the  new  head  of  Tuskegee,  are  the  finest  products)  and 
the  bringing  about  of  a  better  understanding  between  the 
white  man  and  the  Negro,  and  between  South  and  North. 


346  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

The  Nation  does  not  yet  appreciate  the  debt  it  owes  to  Gen 
eral  Armstrong,  the  prophet  of  the  Hampton  idea,  and  to  Dr. 
Frissell,  its  statesman. 

But  the  constructive  movements  are  not  all  confined  to  the 
white  people.  Among  the  Negroes  themselves,  there  is  grow 
ing  up  a  body  of  conservative  opinion.  Increasing  property- 
ownership  makes  men  comfortable,  dulls  the  appetite  for  agi 
tation  and  reform.  There  are  nearly  seventy  banks  owned  by 
Negroes  in  the  South,  thousands  of  little  stores,  and  much 
other  property  which,  as  the  Negro  well  knows,  would  suffer 
in  case  any  serious  disturbance  arose.  These  interests  are  ac 
tively  organized  in  the  National  Negro  Business  League,  with 
a  wide  and  influential  membership.  Moreover,  in  the  black 
belt,  where  nine-tenths  of  the  Negroes  live,  land-ownership 
against  which,  until  recently,  there  has  been  comparatively 
little  opposition,  has  furnished  the  one  great  free  opportunity 
for  expansion  and  has  operated  as  a  safety  valve  for  restless 
ness. 

And  finally,  there  continues  to  exist  in  the  South  a  rather 
intangible  but  very  real  body  of  relationships,  unknown  in  the 
North,  between  individual  white  people  and  individual  colored 
people.  It  varies  all  the  way  from  that  sympathy  and  under 
standing  which  long  association  as  master  and  servant  has 
produced  to  a  hard  sense  of  the  economic  interdependence  of 
the  races.  In  the  cotton  belt,  the  recognition  by  the  white 
man  that  he  must  have  the  Negro  as  a  worker,  and  that  noth 
ing  must  be  done  that  will  go  to  the  length  of  frightening  him 
entirely  away,  acts  as  a  salutary  influence  upon  race-relation 
ships.  In  one  town  that  I  visited  to  investigate  a  lynching,  I 
found  that  the  chief  argument  against  the  rapacity  of  the  mob 
was  that  it  was  cotton-picking  time,  and  Negro  labor  was  be 
ing  frightened  away ! 

I  have  endeavored  to  set  forth  the  present  situation  re 
garding  the  Negro.  Radical  and  conservative  forces  are  both 
operative,  and,  as  usual,  it  is  difficult  to  measure  them  quanti 
tatively — especially  the  conservative  forces,  which  are  always 
the  quietest,  least  clearly  recognizable.  But  certain  general 
tendencies  are  apparent.  The  Negro  is  being  more  completely 
thrown  upon  his  own  resources;  and  at  the  same  time  that  he 
begins  to  feel  his  strength,  becomes  better  educated,  and  more 
intelligent,  he  feels  more  distressingly  the  pressure  and  in- 


THE   NEGRO   PROBLEM  347 

justice  from  above:  and  he  now  has  leaders  who  are  able 
enough  and  courageous  enough  to  make  his  situation  clear  to 
him.  It  is  a  condition  full  of  danger,  not  only  to  the  Negro 
and  the  South,  but  to  the  whole  country:  and  its  most  men 
acing  aspect  is  the  contemptuous  indifference  of  a  large  part 
of  "white  America  to  what  is  going  on  in  the  depths  of  the 
volcano  just  below.  Men  of  the  North  like  to  comfort  them 
selves  by  thinking  of  the  Negro  as  a  Southern  problem.  He 
is  not  that :  he  is  a  national  problem ;  and  it  must  be  sharply 
realized  that  injustice  sooner  or  later  brings  its  sure  reward — 
and  the  more  monstrous  the  injustice,  the  more  terrible  the 
consequences. 


WAY  TO  RACIAL  PEACE1 

Under  the  stress  of  the  World  War  program  of  racial  co 
operation  developed  with  a  vigor  heretofore  unknown.  The 
experience  gained  in  past  experiments  was  enlarged  and  de 
veloped  in  many  directions.  Local  Red  Cross  chapters  formed 
colored  auxiliaries  for  Home  Service  work  and  for  other  ac 
tivities.  Councils  of  defense,  Liberty  Loan  committees, 
Y.  M.  C.  A.  and  Y.  W.  C.  A.,  War  Work  Councils  and  other 
agencies  had  joint  Negro  organizations.  Various  mission 
boards,  welfare  societies  and  associations  enlarged  their  efforts 
to  bring  both  races  into  cooperative  actions. 

Federal  and  State  governments  adopted  the  principle  of 
racial  cooperation  in  war  efforts.  The  war  program  of  the 
Department  of  Labor  may  be  given  as  an  illustration.  The 
Secretary  of  War  could  draft  men,  send  them  as  soldiers 
wherever  he  desired  and  could  compel  them  to  stay  put.  The 
Secretary  of  Labor,  as  a  leader  of  our  agricultural  and  indus 
trial  army,  had  no  such  authority  to  compel  workmen.  He 
had  to  depend  upon  the  confidence  and  enthusiasm  of  the  la 
bor  recruits. 

In  dealing  with  Negro  workers,  Secretary  of  Labor  Wil 
liam  B.  Wilson  recognized  that,  since  they  constitute  about 
one-seventh  of  the  working  army,  their  confidence  and  en- 
thusiams  could  best  be  fostered  by  giving  them  representation 
in  councils  where  matters  affecting  them  were  considered  and 

iFrom  article  by  George  E.  Haynes,  Director  of  Negro  Economics, 
United  States  Department  of  Labor.  World  Outlook.  5:3-4.  October,  1919. 


348  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

decided.  He  therefore  created  the  office  of  Director  of  Negro 
Economics  and  adopted  a  plan  for  local  county,  city  and 
State  Negro  Workers'  Advisory  Committees  composed  of  Ne 
gro  workers  and  cooperating  with  white  employers,  and, 
wherever  possible,  white  workers. 

To  transfer  such  a  plan  from  paper  to  actual  operation  in 
ten  states  demanded  racial  understanding.  Before  such  under 
standing  could  be  developed,  the  friction,  prejudices,  antago 
nisms,  fears  and  suspicions  of  both  sides  had  to  be  met.  There 
stood  also  in  the  pathway  of  such  a  program  the  inevitable 
lack  of  adjustment  between  national  needs,  standards,  and 
policies,  on  the  one  hand,  and  local  needs,  problems,  and  de 
sire  for  self-direction  on  the  other.  Furthermore,  racial  la 
bor  problems  necessarily  had  to  be  solved  in  local  communi 
ties.  The  task  was  to  get  these  local  communities  to  recog 
nize  the  larger  national  standards  and  needs  in  adjusting  local 
situations.  State  Conferences  composed  of  representative 
white  and  colored  citizens  were  held  in  Virginia,  North  Caro 
lina,  Georgia,  Florida,  Mississippi,  Alabama,  Tennessee,  Ken 
tucky,  Ohio,  Michigan,  Illinois  and  Missouri.  The  state  gov 
ernments  cooperated  in  these  conferences,  which  led  in  ten 
states  to  the  establishment  of  State  Negro  Workers  Advisory 
Committees  with  county  and  city  branches  made  up  of  repre 
sentatives  from  the  Negro  workers  and  cooperating  white 
members  from  employers,  and  wherever  possible  white 
workers. 

The  good  feeling  and  enthusiasm  for  cooperation  in  local 
labor  efforts  ran  high  at  these  conferences  and  flowed  out 
from  them  over  the  states.  Besides  the  State  conferences, 
sixteen  local  conferences  were  held  and  one  informal  national 
conference  with  white  and  colored  representatives  from  forty- 
five  interested  agencies,  mission  boards  and  associations  met 
in  Washington  last  February. 

In  nine  states  these  committees  set  up  by  the  conferences, 
and  through  which  much  constructive  work  was  done,  have 
continued  to  operate  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  a  failure  of  con 
gressional  appropriation  forced  the  Department  of  Labor  to 
discontinue  the  employment  of  State  Supervisors  of  Negro 
Economics.  '  These  state  supervisors  as  paid  workers  helped 
to  make  the  work  of  the  volunteer  committees  effective. 

Out  of  such  experiences  of  racial  cooperation  in  these  many 


THE  ^EGRO    PROBLEM  349 

war  organizations  and  activities  a  few  definite  indications 
point  clearly  to  the  first  steps  in  plans  for  prevention  of  ra 
cial  conflict  and  for  amicable  adjustment.  We  see  clearly 
that  every  community  in  which  racial  problems  are  an  issue 
needs  three  things :  first,  a  form  of  racial  cooperative  or 
ganization  ;  second,  a  program  of  work ;  third,  an  organiza 
tion  personnel  with  a  conciliatory,  cooperative  spirit  and  an 
appreciation  of  the  human  qualities  of  all,  from  the  highest 
down  to  the  lowliest  of  either  race.  It  is  well  to  bear  in  mind 
continually  the  fact  that  the  purpose  of  this  organization,  pro 
gram  and  personnel  in  action  is  action  that  brings  results. 
Constructive  work  to  meet  the  needs  of  the  community  must 
be  the  dominant  policy.  It  is  not  enough  merely  to  fight 
evils.  Cures  for  typhoid  and  malaria  and  remedies  for  mobs 
are  certainly  needed  after  these  ills  appear.  More  important, 
however,  is  prevention  of  the  occurrence  and  recurrence  of 
these  evils.  Preventive  social  sanitation  is  more  effective  than 
social  therapeutics. 

Let  us  look  now  at  the  general  form  of  organization  for 
cooperative  agencies.  In  every  community  there  already  ex 
ist  a  church,  a  school,  and  in  most  Negro  communities  a  se 
cret  society.  These  communities  also  have  police  officers, 
health  officers  and  court  officials.  In  addition,  many  commu 
nities  have  women's  clubs,  men's  clubs,  commercial  bodies,  labor 
organizations,  Christian  associations  and  welfare  societies.  Such 
organizations  among  the  white  people  are  usually  duplicated 
among  Negroes. 

Through  representatives  of  the  more  responsible  among 
these  agencies  there  may  be  formed  a  joint  community  coun 
cil  with  white  and  colored  committees,  which  may  meet  to 
gether  or  separately  as  occasions  make  expedient. 

The  general  outline  of  a  working  program  may  include: 
first,  problems  of  employment  of  efficient  work,  fair  wages 
and  reasonable  treatment.  Such  questions  have  hardly  yet 
received  more  than  first-aid  attention  in  any  community. 

The  second  item  in  a  cooperative  program  relates  to  the 
Negro  home.  This  is  a  point  of  need  where  cooperation  will 
bring  results  not  only  for  the  Negro  but  for  the  whole  com 
munity.  A  campaign  for  better  housing,  help  in  promoting 
home  ownership  through  building  and  loan  associations  and 
housing  corporations,  legislation  to  improve  the  building  code, 
and  other  housing  measures  may  well  form  a  part  in  any 
community  program. 


350  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

Third,  recreation,  amusement  and  instruction  during  leisure 
hours  are  important.  When  at  work,  one  obeys  his  boss; 
when  at  play,  he  follows  the  line  of  least  resistance,  which 
helps  him  forget  both  his  work  and  his  boss.  In  both  city 
and  country,  facilities  are  needed  for  music,  games,  wholesome 
moving  pictures  and  other  recreational  devices.  Large  funds 
are  not  always  necessary  for  such  a  program.  With  the  Ne 
gro's  love  for  music  and  singing,  the  problem  needs  mainly 
thought  and  planning.  The  success  of  the  War  Camp  Com 
munity  Service  "sings"  indicates  the  practicability  of  such  a 
plan. 

The  usefulness  of  public  lectures  and  musical  and  literary 
features  as  a  means  of  enlightenment  for  the  masses  of  the 
people  is  only  beginning  to  be  realized.  The  public  library 
and  the  public- press  are  gaining  in  popularity  among  Negroes. 

Let  us  always  bear  in  mind  that  the  organized  forces  of 
evil  can  be  overcome  only  by  the  organized  forces  of  good 
playing  on  human  desire. 

Fourth,  the  question  of  recreation  leads  naturally  to  the 
question  of  schools  for  Negro  children.  There  is  not  a  Ne 
gro  community  in  the  country  which  would  not  be  benefited 
by  greater  racial  cooperation  in  improving  educational  facili 
ties  for  Negroes. 

A  fifth  plank  in  our  program  is  health.  A  campaign  to 
make  health  catching  is  not  difficult  to  develop  at  the  present 
time  when  the  United  States  Public  Health  Service  is  con 
ducting  a  nation-wide  campaign  against  venereal  diseases; 
when  nearly  every  state,  city  and  town  has  some  public  health 
activity.  The  need  for  such  a  health  program  as  well  as  other 
improvements,  is  indicated  by  statistics  of  the  death-rates  in 
cities.  For  instance,  in  the  middle  western  city  the  Negro 
death-rate  is  twice  that  of  the  whites.  Three  colored  children 
under  one  year  of  age  die  for  every  white  child  who  dies  at 
a  similar  age.  All  the  population  of  any  community  which 
neglects  Negro  health  in  this  way  pays  a  penalty.  Death 
draws  no  color  line. 

Many  other  items  will  be  included  in  the  programs  of  dif 
ferent  communities,  but  these  five  points  are  fundamental  and 
have  a  practical  constructive  value  to  members  of  both  races. 
And  as  the  races  work  together  to  meet  these  needs,  there  will 
grow  up  good-will,  racial  self-respect,  and  racial  peace. 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  351 

Finally,  let  us  look  at  the  personnel  of  this  community  or 
ganization.  It  should  be  recognized  that  such  a  program  as 
has  been  outlined  needs  some  one  who  can  give  a  large  amount 
of  time  to  the  carrying  out  of  details.  It  should  also  be  rec 
ognized  that  a  community  executive  is  needed  on  the  Negro 
side.  Such  persons  working  together  on  the  delicate  and  diffi 
cult  questions  of  race  relations,  ready  for  prompt  action  when 
action  is  necessary  and  waiting  patiently  when  action  is  to  be 
deferred  are  social  servants  who  will  be  a  blessing  to  any 
community — even  at  considerable  salaries. 

The  ideal  democratic  Christian  cooperation  prophetic  of 
the  new  age,  cannot  be  forced  upon  any  local  community. 
Like  heaven  in  the  heart,  it  grows  from  within.  But  like 
grace  from  without  the  heart,  it  can  be  stimulated  by  national 
organizations  and  their  representatives. 


ULTIMATE  RACE  PROBLEM1 

It  so  happens,  in  the  process  of  human  development,  that 
the  whiter  races  at  present  represent  the  forward  and  pro 
gressive  section  of  the  human  family,  while  the  darker  varie 
ties  are  relatively  backward  and  belated.  That  the  relative 
concrete  superiority  of  the  European  is  due  to  the  advantage 
of  historical  environment  rather  than  to  innate  ethnic  endow 
ment  a  careful  study  of  the  trend  of  social  forces  leaves  little 
room  to  doubt.  Temporary  superiority  of  this  or  that  breed 
of  men  is  only  a  transient  phase  of  human  development.  In 
the  history  of  civilization  the  various  races  and  nations  rise 
and  fall  like  the  waves  of  the  sea,  each  imparting  an  impulse 
to  its  successor,  which  pushes  the  process  further  and  further 
forward. 

Civilization  is  not  an  original  process  with  any  race  or  na 
tion  known  to  history,  but  the  torch  is  passed  from  age  to  age, 
and  gains  in  brilliancy  as  it  goes.  Those  who  for  the  time  be 
ing  stand  at  the  apex  of  prestige  and  power  are  ever  prone  to 
indulge  in  "Such  boasting  as  the  Gentiles  use,"  and  claim  ever 
lasting  superiority  over  the  "lesser  breeds."  Nothing  less  can 
be  expected  of  human  vanity  and  pride.  But  history  plays 

1  From  Out  of  the  House  of  Bondage,  by  Kelly  Miller,  Dean  of  the 
College  of  Arts  and  Sciences,  Howard  University,  p.  218-39.  Copyright 
by  Neale  Publishing  Co.  New  York.  1914- 


352  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

havoc  with  the  vain-glorious  boasting  of  national  and  racial 
conceit.  Where  are  the  Babylonians,  the  Assyrians  and  the 
Egyptians,  who  once  lorded  it  over  the  earth?  In  the  histor 
ical  recessional  of  races  they  are  "one  with  Nineveh  and 
Tyre."  Expeditions  must  be  sent  from  some  distant  continent 
to  unearth  the  glorious  monuments  of  their  ancestors  from 
beneath  the  very  feet  of  their  degenerate  descendants.  The 
lordly  Greeks  who  ruled  the  world  through  the  achievements 
of  the  mind,  who  gave  the  world  Homer  and  Socrates  and 
Phidias  in  the  heyday  of  their  glory,  have  so  sunken  in  the 
scale  of  excellence  that,  to  use  the  language  of  Macaulay, 
"their  people  have  degenerated  into  timid  slaves  and  their 
language  into  a  barbarous  jargon."  On  the  other  hand,  the 
barbarians  who,  Aristotle  tells  us,  could  not  count  beyond  ten 
fingers  in  his  day  subsequently  produced  Kant  and  Shakespeare 
and  Newton.  The  Arab  and  the  Moor  for  a  season  led  the 
van  of  the  world's  civilization. 

Because  any  particular  race  or  class  has  not  yet  been 
caught  up  by  the  current  of  the  world  movement  is  no  ade 
quate  reason  to  conclude  that  it  must  forever  fall  without  the 
reach  of  its  onward  flow.  If  history  teaches  any  clear  lesson, 
it  is  that  civilization  is  communicable  to  the  tougher  and 
hardier  breeds  of  men,  whose  physical  stamina  can  endure  the 
awful  stress  of  transmission.  To  damn  a  people  to  everlast 
ing  inferiority  because  of  deficiency  in  historical  distinction 
shows  the  same  faultiness  of  logic  as  the  assumption  that 
what  never  has  been  never  can  be.  The  application  of  this 
test  a  thousand  years  ago  would  have  placed  under  the  ban 
of  reproach  all  of  the  vigorous  and  virile  nations  of  modern 
times. 

The  European  races  are  now  overrunning  the  world  in 
quest  of  new  resources  to  exploit,  and  are  thus  coming  into 
close  and  intimate  contact  with  the  various  weaker  breeds  of 
men.  The  commercial  spirit  is  the  ruling  passion  of  the  dom 
inant  world  today.  The  whole  surface  of  the  habitable  globe 
is  practically  parceled  out  among  the  stronger  nations  within 
denned  spheres  of  influence.  It  is  easy  to  predict  the  continu 
ance  of  this  process  until  "every  creature"  has  been  touched 
by  modern  civilization.  The  wonderful  growth  of  exact 
knowledge  and  its  application  to  the  forces  of  nature  is  ren 
dering  this  contact  easy  and  inevitable.  Steam  and  electricity 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  353 

have  annihilated  distance  and  banished  the  terrors  of  the  deep; 
preventive  and  remedial  medicine  has  neutralized  the  baneful 
influence  of  climate,  and  checked  the  ravage  of  disease;  the 
hardship  of  pioneer  life  is  lessened  by  the  easy  transportation 
of  material  comforts,  and  the  loneliness  of  isolation  is  re 
lieved  by  the  transmission  of  intelligence  which  is  flashed 
around  the  world  swifter  than  the  wings  of  morning.  We 
may  naturally  expect  that  less  and  less  heed  will  be  paid  to 
the  fixity  of  the  bounds  of  habitation  of  the  various  races 
and  nations  that  dwell  upon  the  face  of  the  earth.  The  out 
come  of  this  contact  constitutes  the  race  problem  of  the  world. 
As  water  when  unrestrained  flows  from  a  higher  to  a  lower 
level  till  equilibrium  is  established,  so  we  may  expect  this 
stream  to  flow  down  and  out  from  the  higher  fount  until  the 
various  races  and  tribes  of  men  reach  an  equilibrium  of  civil 
ization  and  culture. 

The  place  of  education  in  human  development  is  a  prin 
ciple  whose  importance  is  just  beginning  to  dawn  upon  the 
world.  Knowledge  is  the  great  equalizing  factor  in  modern 
civilization.  At  one  time  it  was  thought  that  divine  favor 
made  one  man  lord  over  another.  It  was  but  a  short  step 
from  the  divine  right  of  the  ruler  to  the  divine  right  of  the 
race.  But  we  are  gaining  a  clearer  and  clearer  conviction 
that  racial,  like  individual,  superiority  depends  upon  knowl 
edge,  discipline  and  efficiency,  which  may  be  imparted  largely 
by  education.  A  people  may  gain  or  lose  its  place  according 
as  it  holds  aloof  from  or  keeps  in  touch  with  the  highest  at 
tained  efficiency  of  the  world.  The  powers  and  forces  of  na 
ture  are  not  enchanted  by  any  sorcery  of  race,  but  yield  their 
secret  and  mystery  to  the  application  of  knowledge.  Steam 
and  electricity,  wind  and  wave  and  sunlight,  will  work  as  will 
ingly  for  a  backward  as  for  a  forward  race.  The  only  ad 
vantage  that  the  latter  possesses  is  a  predisposition  to  a  bet 
ter  discipline  and  a  higher  social  efficiency.  It  does  not  ap 
pear  that  it  possesses  a  better  grasp  upon  the  recondite  prin 
ciples  of  knowledge.  Education  can  be  relied  upon  to  dis 
count  if  not  to  liquidate  the  disadvantage  under  which  the 
backward  races  labor.  Nor  is  it  necessary  for  such  races  to 
repeat  the  slow  steps  and  stages  by  which  present  greatness 
has  been  attained.  He  who  comes  at  the  eleventh  hour  is 
placed  on  equal  terms  with  him  who  has  borne  the  heat  and 


354  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

burden  of  the  day  in  the  vineyard  of  civilization.  It  takes 
the  child  of  the  most  favored  race  twenty-five  years  to  absorb 
the  civilization  of  the  world.  The  child  of  the  backward 
race  can  accomplish  the  same  feat  in  the  same  space  of  time. 
Japan  is  teaching  the  world  that  she  can  appropriate  and  ap 
ply  the  agencies  of  civilization  as  readily,  and  wield  them  as 
effectively,  as  the  most  favored  nations  of  Europe.  What 
Japan  has  done  can  be  repeated  by  China  or  India,  or  Africa, 
or  by  any  hardy  people  with  territorial  and  national  integrity 
who  will  assimilate  the  principles  of  modern  progress  through 
education  and  helpful  contact  with  those  nations  which  are 
now  in  the  forefront  of  things. 

There  are  three  distinct  modes  of  race-contact:  (i)  where 
the  European  takes  up  permanent  residence  among  the  weak 
er  race,  as  in  Australia,  South  Africa,  and  Hawaii;  (2)  where 
the  white  man  has  no  expectation  of  permanent  residence, 
but  aims  merely  at  political  and  commercial  domination,  as  in 
India,  North  and  Central  Africa,  and  the  Polynesian  Isles; 
and  (3)  where  the  weaker  race  has  been  introduced  into  the 
land  of  the  stronger  for  the  sake  of  industrial  exploitation, 
as  in  the  United  States,  South  America,  and  the  West  Indian 
archipelago.  The  several  phases  of  the  race  problem  growing 
out  of  these  different  modes  of  contact  are  too  often  over 
looked  in  current  discussion. 

The  conceivable  lines  of  outcome  of  race-contact  are:  the 
enslavement  of  the  weaker,  or,  what  amounts  to  the  same 
thing,  its  subordination  into  an  inferior  caste;  the  extermina 
tion  of  the  weaker  or  of  the  stronger;  amalgamation  or  ab 
sorption;  and  amicable  adjustment  and  continuance  of  dis 
tinct  ethnic  types.  All  of  these  processes  will  doubtless  con 
tribute  in  part  to  the  solution  of  this  problem.  The  outcome 
will  not  be  uniform  and  invariable,  but  will  depend  upon  the 
nature  and  complexity  of  underlying  conditions. 

In  the  United  States  this  problem  presents  many  interest 
ing  and  unique  phases  which  cause  the  student  of  social  sub 
jects  to  bestow  upon  it  a  degree  of  attention  beyond  that  ac 
corded  any  other  point  of  race-contact  throughout  the  world. 
Its  workings  are  watched  with  the  keenest  interest,  and  much 
reliance  is  placed  upon  its  indications,  because  it  presents  the 
widest  types  of  ethnic  divergence  in  the  closest  intimacy  of 
contact. 


THE  NEGRO   PROBLEM  355 

Wherever  the  white  man  has  touched  the  weaker  races 
he  has  never  scrupled  to  mingle  his  blood  with  theirs. 
The  sons  of  the  gods  are  ever  prone  to  look  lustfully  upon 
the  daughters  of  men.  There  arises  a  composite  progeny 
which  enters  as  an  important  factor  into  race-adjustment.  In 
this  regard  it  is  necessary  to  make  a  sharp  distinction  between 
the  Teutonic  and  Catholic  races  of  Europe.  The  Latin  or 
Catholic  nations  give  the  mongrel  offspring  the  status  of  the 
father,  while  the  Teutonic  or  Protestant  races  relegate  them 
to  the  status  of  the  mother  race.  In  one  case  the  white  race 
becomes  mongrelized  while  the  feebler  element  remains  com 
paratively  pure;  whereas,  in  the  other,  the  white  race  remains 
pure  while  the  lower  race  becomes  mixed.  In  Cuba,  where 
the  Latin  dispensation  prevails,  the  mixed  element  is  returned 
as  white;  but  in  the  United  States  it  is  classed  with  the  Ne 
groes.  In  Cuba,  Porto  Rico  and  South  America  the  mongrel- 
ization  of  the  races  is  either  an  accomplished  or  an  assured 
result. 

A  caste  system  must  be  like  a  pyramid,  each  layer  repre 
senting  a  broader  area  than  the  one  resting  upon  it.  It  is  im 
possible  to  form  a  lasting  system  of  caste  with  a  superincum- 
bence  of  ten  white  men  upon  the  substratum  of  one  Negro. 
If  the  Negroes  were  everywhere  relatively  as  numerous  as 
they  are  in  some  parts  of  the  Southern  states,  and  if  the 
whites  were  not  smothered  out  by  numerical  predominance, 
the  permanence  of  caste  might  be  counted  on  as  a  calculable 
factor.  The  slave  system  in  America  was  doomed  to  destruc 
tion  because  the  slave  element  was  not  sufficiently  numerous 
to  support  the  entire  white  population.  Even  in  the  South 
there  were  only  five  hundred  thousand  slaveholders,  who  con 
trolled  four  million  slaves,  leaving  six  million  free  whites 
practically  on  the  level  with  Negro  bondmen,  a  condition 
which  could  exist  only  until  the  non-slaveholding  class  became 
conscious  of  their  condition.  The  free  laborer  of  the  North 
was  the  first  to  awake  to  consciousness  of  the  fact  that  he  was 
made  the  competitor  of  slave  labor,  a  condition  which  he  re 
sented  and  resisted  to  the  bitter  end.  The  overthrow  of  slav 
ery  was  due  to  economic  as  well  as  to  moral  and  philanthropic 
causes. 

After  the  red  and  brown  races  shall  have  perished  from 
the  face  of  the  earth;  after  the  fragmentary  peoples  have 


356  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

been  exterminated,  expelled  or  absorbed;  after  the  diffusion 
of  knowledge  has  established  a  world  equilibrium,  there  will 
be  left  the  white,  the  yellow  and  the  black  as  the  residuary 
races,  each  practically  in  its  ethnic  identity,  and  occupying  its 
own  habitat.  We  can  only  prophecy  peace,  amity  and  good 
will  among  these  types,  who  will  more  fully  appreciate  than 
we  do  now  that  God  has  made  of  one  blood  all  nations  to 
dwell  upon  the  face  of  the  earth,  within  assignable  bounds  of 
habitation.  Whether  this  will  be  but  a  stage  in  the  ultimate 
blending  of  all  races  in  a  common  world  type  transcends  all 
of  our  present  calculable  data,  and  must  be  left  to  the  play 
of  the  imagination. 


FUTURE  OF  THE  NEGRO  PEOPLE 1 

While,  it  cannot  as  yet  be  predicted  with  certainty  that 
the  Negro  will  eventually  reach  a  state  of  complete  inherent 
equality  with  the  white  man;  neither  can  it  be  maintained, 
on  the  other  hand,  that  this  is  outside  the  range  of  possi 
bility.  All  we  know  is,  that,  though  the  Negro  is  still  back 
ward,  he  is  steadily  moving  forward;  and  that,  though  he  is 
still  below  the  other  race  in  point  of  ability,  he  is  gradually 
coming  up.  His  present  incapacities,  therefore,  appear  to 
be  not  those  of  the  lower  orders  of  creation  as  compared 
with  man,  but  rather  those  of  the  growing  child  as  com 
pared  with  the  mature  adult. 

As  the  Negro's  inferiority  was  found  to  be  at  the  bot 
tom  of  the  Negro  problem,  and  as  this  inferiority  is  now 
seen  to  be  not  only  reducible,  but  also  actually  being  re 
duced,  the  conclusion  is  inevitable  that  the  problem  itself 
is  in  process  of  measurable  solution,  as  regards  its  most 
fundamental  element. 

The  other  element  in  this  problem,  which  still  remains 
to  be  considered,  is  that  of  the  prevailing  prejudice  against 
the  Negro.  As  this  also  was  shown  to  have  its  root  in  the 
Negro's  inferiority,  it  would  logically  be  expected  to  show 
some  mitigation  as  that  inferiority  is  lessened.  But  on 

1  From  In  Freedom's  Birthplace,  by  John  Daniels,  Secretary  of  the 
Social  Service  Corporation,  Baltimore.  Chapter  X.  Copyright  by  Houghton, 
Mifflin  Co.  Boston,  1914. 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  357 

the  surface  at  least,  as  previously  stated,  this  prejudice  ap 
pears  to  have  increased  in  recent  years. 

In  view  of  the  sketch  which  has  already  been  given  of 
the  course  of  development  of  the  attitude  toward  the  Negro, 
on  the  part  of  the  other  race,  from  the  earliest  period  down 
to  the  present,  it  must  be  obvious  that  the  antipathy  which 
exists  today  is  to  some  extent  a  survival  and  outgrowth 
of  that  which  has  existed  in  former  years.  As  account 
ing  both  for  the  perpetuation  of  prejudice  in  this  way,  and 
also  for  its  further  increase,  several  sets  of  influences  may 
be  perceived. 

The  first  of  these  consists  of  facts,  reports,  or  mem 
ories,  having  to  do  with  conditions  of  inferiority  among 
this  race  in  the  past.  The  attitude  of  a  great  many  people 
toward  the  Negro  is  without  doubt  determined  wholly  or 
mainly  by  such  impressions  from  days  gone  by,  with  little 
or  no  regard  to  the  present.  In  the  case  of  some  persons, 
the  distant  fact  that  this  race  was  originally  brought  from 
a  state  of  savagery  in  Africa  is  sufficient  to  stigmatize  it 
beyond  hope  of  redemption.  Others  look  down  upon  the 
Negroes  because  they  used  to  be  slaves.  With  a  much  larger 
number,  however,  the  aversion  displayed  is  traceable  to  no 
specific  source,  but  to  a  vague  combination  of  things  read, 
or  heard,  or  remembered  from  their  own  experience,  about 
the  Negro  at  an  earlier  time.  On  the  part  of  some  of  the 
older  residents  of  Boston,  who  were  living  in  the  city  in 
the  first  two  or  three  decades  following  the  war,  when 
uncouth  blacks  were  swarming  in  from  the  South,  the 
disagreeable  impressions  then  received  stick  obstinately. 

A  second  factor  working  in  this  same  direction,  is  that 
of  accounts  and  hearsay  concerning  conditions  among  the 
Negroes  in  the  Southern  States.  There  are  many  white 
people  of  Boston  who  know  practically  nothing  about  the 
Negro  in  their  own  city,  but  who  nevertheless  become 
violently  prejudiced  against  him,  as  the  result  of  glaring 
newspaper  reports  of  brutal  crimes,  superstitious  orgies,  and 
the  like,  said  to  have  taken  place  somewhere  in  the  Black 
Belt.  Another  contingent  are  adversely  influenced  by  things 
which  they  hear  from  white  Southerners,  regarding  the  al 
leged  ignorance,  shiftlessness,  and  depravity  of  the  Negroes 


358  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

in  that  part  of  the  country.  Still  others,  who  happen  for 
one  reason  or  another  to  visit  the  South,  return  with  an 
unfavorable  verdict  respecting  the  Negro  in  Boston,  which 
is  based  entirely  on  snap-shot  glimpses  of  the  conditions 
of  this  race  in,  say,  Alabama  or  Mississippi. 

The  third  element  in  continuing  and  furthering  prejudice, 
consists  of  superficial  observation  of  the  Negro  in  the  Boston 
community  itself.  Only  a  slight  fraction  of  the  city's  white 
inhabitants  have  even  a  cursory  knowledge  of  the  actual 
facts  pertaining  to  its  Negro  population.  The  great  majority 
of  the  former  know  the  latter  only  from  seeing  them  in 
the  hotels,  as  menials,  dealing  with  them  in  their  homes, 
as  servants,  making  an  occasional  curious  excursion  to  a 
Negro  church,  or  passing  now  and  then  through  a  Negro 
district; — and  almost  always,  it  must  be  said,  with  their 
eyes  and  ears  open  for  something  to  make  fun  of,  or  to 
censure.  Judgment  arrived  at  in  this  haphazard  fashion — 
and  in  such  an  attitude  of  mind — can  hardly  be  considered 
as  either  just  or  dependable. 

These  prejudicial  influences,  operating  to  exaggerate  and 
distort  the  Negro's  actual  points  of  past  and  present  in 
feriority,  have  largely  produced  both  a  survival,  and  to 
some  extent  an  increase,  of  that  antipathy  toward  the  Negro 
which  had  its  rise  in  former  years,  when  the  conditions 
among1  this  race  were  far  different  from,  and  far  below,  those 
which  at  present  hold  true. 

Leaving  this  side  of  the  situation,  for  the  moment,  note 
may  be  taken  of  certain  other  influences,  of  a  different 
character,  which  are  working  in  exactly  the  opposite  direc 
tion  from  those  that  have  just  been  mentioned. 

The  first  of  these  is  to  be  found  in  the  increase  both 
of  individual  Negroes  of  marked  ability  and  worth  of  charac 
ter,  and  of  white  people  who  are  brought  into  contact  with 
such  individuals.  Under  these  circumstances,  as  a  rule,  any 
previously  existing  prejudice  on  the  part  of  these  particular 
white  persons  is  appreciably  reduced,  so  far  as  regards 
its  exhibition  with  reference  to  these  particular  Negroes. 
Mention  of  many  individual  Negroes  of  this  grade  has  been 
made  in  the  foregoing  account,  and  brief  autobiographical 
sketches  have  been  given  of  a  few  whose  records  are  typical. 
In  the  case  of  the  latter,  the  reader  must  have  been  struck 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  359 

by  the  fact  that  next  to  no  complaint  was  made  of  any 
sufferings  on  account  of  prejudice;  but  that,  on  the  contrary, 
the  unanimous  testimony  of  these  individuals  was  to  the 
effect  that,  in  their  own  experience,  they  had  for  the  most 
part  succeeded,  by  dint  of  tact  and  the  demonstration  of 
capacity,  in  overcoming  such  antipathy.  White  people  who 
come  to  know  Negroes  of  this  kind  usually  find  that  they 
do  not  feel  toward  them  as  they  do  toward  the  Negro  in 
the  mass,  or  in  the  abstract.  "He  is  different  from  the 
rest,'  is  the  way  they  put  it.  But  in  the  total,  these  Negroes 
who  are  "different"  constitute  a  very  substantial  and  con 
stantly  growing  number;  while  the  members  of  the  other 
race  who  are  thrown  into  more  or  less  association  with 
them  form  a  total  still  larger  and  still  more  rapidly  in 
creasing  number.  Thus,  it  is  evident,  a  considerable  leavening  in 
fluence  is  at  work. 

And  thereby  arises  the  second  factor  of  similar  but 
broader  effect.  Individual  Negroes,  of  the  character  which 
has  been  described,  not  only  overcome  antipathy  in  their 
own  cases,  but  also,  by  their  example,  blaze  the  way  for 
others  of  the  race  to  follow  in  their  steps,  while  at  the 
same  time  they  help  to  lessen  any  prejudice  which  these 
others  may  encounter.  For  it  is  improbable  that  white 
people  can  feel  little  or  no  aversion  toward  particular  Ne 
groes,  without  eventually  coming  to  feel  somewhat  less 
aversion  toward  the  Negroes  as  a  race.  These  particular 
white  people,  moreover,  can  hardly  fail,  by  force  of  word 
and  act,  to  influence  others  in  the  same  direction.  After 
this  manner,  the  number  of  white  people  whose  attitude 
toward  the  Negro  becomes  favorably  modified,  is  still  fur 
ther  increased. 

The  third  factor  in  reducing  prejudice  grows  out  of 
the  two  already  remarked,  but  is  of  a  more  general  nature. 
When  white  people  are  once  brought  to  recognize  ability 
and  accomplishment  on  the  part  of  particular  Negroes,  they 
are  more  likely  to  reflect  that  such  individual  attainment 
really  bears  witness  to  the  latent  capacity  of  the  Negro  in 
general;  and  they  are  also  more  disposed  to  look  for  and 
discover  the  progress  which  the  Negro  people,  as  a  whole, 
are  making.  So  marked  has  this  progress  become  at  many 
points,  indeed,  that  it  is  beginning  of  itself  to  compel 


36o  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

recognition,  even  on  the  part  of  an  increasing  number  of 
persons  whose  eyes  have  not  been  opened  by  individual 
examples.  In  proportion  as  people  become  aware  of  the 
Negroes  advance,  their  attitude  toward  him  cannot  fail  to 
become  more  favorable. 

The  problem's  two  elements  indicate  the  double  road 
which  the  Negro  will  have  to  travel  in  his  advance  into  the 
future.  On  the  one  hand,  he  must  continue  to  make  in 
dependent  strides  on  his  own  account;  while  on  the  other, 
he  must  continue  also  to  insist  upon  his  rights  and  priv 
ileges  as  a  citizen,  and  thus  more  directly  to  combat  the 
prejudice  against  him. 

Though  not  as  a  rule  fully  realized,  the  measure  in  which 
the  possession  of  equal  political  and  civil  rights  by  the 
Negro  in  Boston  conduces  to  his  substantial  progress  through 
his  own  resources,  is  sufficiently  obvious  when  once  pointed  out. 
Such  equality  not  only  instills  this  race  with  a  degree  of 
self-respect  which  it  could  not  have  as  a  class  inferior  be 
fore  the  law,  but  also  results  in  enlarging  at  practically  every 
point,  the  Negro's  opportunities  for  self-improvement. 

First  and  foremost,  the  effective  right  to  vote,  without 
restriction  either  in  law  or  in  fact,  is  of  inestimable  value 
to  the  Negro.  It  gives  him  a  consciousness  of  having  some 
responsible  part  in  the  affairs  of  the  community,  which  other 
wise  he  would  not  feel,  and  which  cannot  but  act  upon  him 
as  a  general  spur  and  incentive.  More  immediately,  the 
franchise  enables  him  to  make  concrete  protest  against  as 
pirants  for  leadership  who  are  unfriendly  to  his  race,  and 
policies  which  are  inimical  to  his  welfare,  as  well  as  mak 
ing  it  possible  for  him,  from  a  more  positive  and  con 
structive  point  of  view,  to  promote  measures  calculated  to 
assist  him.  The  ballot  furthermore  puts  him  in  a  position 
to  demand  just  political  recognition,  in  the  form  of  com 
petent  public  offices;  while  the  holding  of  such  offices,  and 
the  creditable  performance  of  the  duties  involved,  not  only 
give  rise  among  the  Negroes  themselves  to  a  justified  con 
fidence  in  their  own  potential  abilities,  but  also  have  the  ef 
fect  of  obtaining  fuller  recognition  of  their  capacity  on  the 
part  of  the  other  race.  Likewise  the  right  to  attend  the 
same  public  schools  and  other  educational  institutions  as 

those  attended  by  the  whites,  renders  accessible  to  the  Negro 

. 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  361 

advantages  in  securing  an  education  which  are  undoubtedly 
far  superior  to  any  separate  provision  likely  to  be  made  for 
him,  if  a  policy  of  segregation  were  followed.  The  freedom 
of  this  race  to  reside  in  any  locality  means  that  a  con 
siderable  proportion  of  its  members  are  able  to  live  and  to 
rear  their  children  in  much  more  healthful,  morally  salutary, 
and  otherwise  desirable  surroundings,  than  would  be  the 
case  if  the  Negroes  were  confined  within  such  congested 
and  evilly  environed  colonies  as  those  which  exist  in  many 
cities  of  the  South.  The  further  right  to  purchase  real 
estate  in  any  section  supplies  the  Negroes  with  a  stronger 
motive  to  become  owners  of  homes,  and  results  in  their 
acquiring  more  and  better  property,  than  would  be  true 
if  their  holdings  were  restricted,  as  in  some  Southern  cities, 
to  certain  inferior  districts. 

In  addition  to  these  rather  specific  considerations,  there 
are  two  whose  bearing  is  more  general.  The  first  of  these  is, 
that  inasmuch  as  the  other  race  is  still  in  a  much  more  ad 
vanced  stage  of  development  than  the  Negro,  the  present 
extent  of  the  latter's  contact  with  white  people  must  be 
reckoned  a  factor  of  the  utmost  value  in  his  own  progress. 
For  thus,  instead  of  being  forced  back  wholly  upon  himself 
and  his  own  limitations,  he  is  constantly  enabled  to  derive 
encouragement  and  stimulus  from  the  experience  and  ex 
ample  of  the  other  race.  At  the  same  time — and  this  is  the 
companion  factor — such  inter-racial  association  has  the  result 
of  acquainting  the  other  race  with  the  Negro  in  a  closer 
and  more  discriminating  way,  and  of  giving  it  a  more  sym 
pathetic  understanding  both  of  the  difficulties  with  which 
the  Negro  has  to  contend,  and  of  the  degree  to  which  these 
difficulties  are  being  conquered  by  him. 

But  while  thus  equality  of  public  privilege  greatly  quick 
ens  the  Negro's  rate  of  progress,  the  ways  in  which,  as 
already  suggested,  this  very  self-achievement  qualifies  him  to 
gain  and  to  hold  such  privilege,  are  likewise  obvious.  The 
Negro's  marked  advance  in  point  of  education  and  refine 
ment,  to  begin  with,  secures  for  many  members  of  this  race 
an  amount  of  helpful  association  with  the  other  race  which 
they  could  not  possibly  obtain  if  ignorant  and  uncouth.  The 
good  appearance,  as  regards  dress  and  demeanor,  which  all 
but  the  poorest  element  of  the  Negroes  in  Boston  usually 


362  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

present,  obtains  them  admittance,  and  thus  establishes  a 
precedent  for  their  admittance,  in  many  places  of  semi- 
public  character,  such  as  theaters,  churches,  settlements, 
educational  and  other  institutions,  from  which,  were  they  a 
class  of  ragamuffins  and  rowdies,  they  would  be  effectually 
shut  out. 

The  individual  Negro  will  never  gain  the  full  respect  of 
the  other  race  until  he  first  comes  fully  to  respect  himself. 
This  he  cannot  do  until  his  own  race  has  reached  the  point 
where  he  will  not  be  ashamed,  he  will  be  proud,  to  own 
himself  a  Negro.  Other  racial  stocks — as,  for  example,  the 
Slavs,  Celts,  or  Teutons — feel  no  aversion,  but  only  the  pride 
of  historical  achievement,  in  these  corresponding  designa 
tions.  The  Negro  affords  the  one  solitary  case  of  which  the 
opposite  is  true.  And  the  reason  for  this  is,  that  as  yet 
the  Negro  has  comparatively  little  history  which  warrants 
pride.  Therefore,  he  must  set  to  work  to  make  a  history 
for  himself.  He  must  have  a  creditable  past  upon  which 
to  build  a  creditable  future. 

The  development  of  the  Negro  people  as  a  distinct  racial 
group,  with  traditions,  leaders,  and  ideals  of  their  own,  will 
run  not  counter,  but  parallel  to  the  considerably  slower  proc 
ess  of  the  Negro's  articulation  into  the  common  life  of 
the  community.  Though  it  may  appear  paradoxical  to  say 
that  the  surest  way  in  which  the  Negro  will  succeed  in  over 
coming  the  prevailing  attitude  in  his  disfavor  will  be  by 
becoming  more  and  not  less  a  Negro  than  he  is  today,  this 
is  nevertheless  the  truth.  For  as  the  Negro,  in  proportion 
to  his  own  independent  progress,  compels  increased  respect 
for  his  capacity,  the  other  race  will  gradually  and  naturally 
become  more  willing  to  receive  him  into  closer  association. 

This  articulating  process  has  already,  indeed,  reached  a 
noticeably  advanced  stage:  The  fact  that,  in  point  of  resi 
dence,  the  Negroes  are  being  distributed  among  the  city's 
white  inhabitants  to  a  constantly  widening  extent,  cannot 
fail  to  promote  mutually  better  acquaintance  and  to  give 
rise  to  common  interests.  Likewise,  in  the  ranks  of  in 
dustry,  the  interspersion  of  Negro  workmen  among  white 
workmen,  in  both  manual  and  clerical  occupations,  is  steadily 
increasing.  The  proportion  of  the  Negro  professional  and 
business  class  who  are  venturing  to  go  outside  those 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  363 

districts  colonized  by  their  own  people,  and  to  try  their  for 
tunes  among  white  competitors,  though  of  course  still  small, 
is  continually  growing.  Cases  of  office-sharing  and  even 
of  partnership  between  persons  of  the  two  races  are  less 
of  a  rarity  now  than  in  former  years,  while  instances  of 
Negro  proprietors  or  of  responsible  employees  having  white 
workmen  in  their  charge  are  oftener  to  be  found.  General 
trade  contact  between  these  two  elements  of  the  population 
is  gradually  extending,  while  through  the  use  of  banks,  the 
ownership  of  property,  and  the  paying  of  taxes,  the  Negro 
is  being  linked,  more  and  more  substantially,  to  the  economic 
interests  of  the  community. 

Citizens  of  both  races  vote  together  at  the  same  voting 
places  and  on  an  equal  basis.  Through  representation  on 
the  various  party  committees,  the  Negroes  have  some  part  in 
the  management  of  party  affairs,  and  at  all  political  con 
ventions  Negro  delegates  are  to  be  seen.  Especially  under 
the  civil  service,  an  increasing  quota  of  Negroes  are  serving 
in  public  positions  side  by  side  with  officials  of  the  other 
race.  With  regard  to  religious  activity,  though  on  the  whole 
the  attendance  of  Negroes  at  white  churches  is  diminishing, 
yet  as  previously  noted  there  are  some  churches  which  are 
marked  exceptions  to  this  rule;  and,  on  a  broader  scale, 
cases  of  white  churches,  especially  in  the  suburbs,  which 
contain  a  few  earnest  and  well-regarded  Negro  members, 
are  coming  to  constitute  a  significant  total.  The  Negro 
churches  are  admitted  into  the  general  denominational  organ 
izations,  Negro  delegates  participate  in  the  general  meet 
ings,  and  no  color  line  is  drawn  on  the  various  ministers' 
societies.  In  the  public  schools  white  and  Negro  children 
work  and  play  together  in  apparent  innocence  of  any  barrier. 
These  memories  and  impressions  of  childhood  are  not  easily 
blotted  out.  White  youth  of  high-school  and  college  age 
find  Negro  youth  often  their  equals  and  sometimes  their 
superiors,  both  in  scholarship  and  athletic  prowess.  A 
Negro  principal,  half  a  dozen  teachers,  and  several  school 
officials,  represent  the  Negro  on  the  side  of  substantial  con 
tribution  to  the  city's  educational  advance. 

Perhaps  it  may  be  said,  however,  that  all  such  contact  as 
this  between  the  two  races  ends  simply  with  itself,  and 
neither  signifies  nor  leads  to  social  intercourse  of  such  uncondi- 


364  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

tioned  character  as  that  which  takes  place  between  the 
various  elements  of  the  white  population.  In  other  words, 
it  may  be  held  that  though  the  Negro  is  in  the  community, 
and  closely  related  to  it,  he  is  not  by  any  means  an  in 
tegral  part  of  it.  This  distinction  is,  without  doubt,  a  real 
and  vital  one.  But  it  is  at  the  same  time  so  subtle,  in  many 
respects,  as  to  render  the  question  raised  by  it  extremely 
difficult,  if  not  at  this  stage  practically  impossible,  to  answer 
with  finality.  Viewed  against  the  background  of  the  prevail 
ing  prejudice  against  the  Negro  people  and  the  still  out 
standing  fact  of  their  separateness  in  the  main,  whatever 
association  there  is  between  the  Negro  and  the  white  por 
tion  of  the  population  tends  easily  and  plausibly,  of  course, 
to  appear  as  something  of  an  altogether  peculiar  and  rigidly 
limited  nature.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  may  it  not  be  that 
these  perfectly  obvious  elements  of  prejudice  and  separate- 
ness  loom  so  large  and  so  near  as  to  bias  and  distort  the 
observer's  vision,  and  to  render  him  incapable  of  preceiving, 
in  their  true  light  and  at  their  full  value,  any  facts  of  an 
opposite  significance?  The  writer  feels  confident,  out  of 
years  of  experience,  that,  as  regards  all  except  possibly 
the  most  intimate  personal  relations,  no  such  necessarily 
fixed  barrier  between  the  Negro  and  the  white  man,  as  that 
which  has  just  been  suggested,  actually  exists;  that  there 
is  today  a  substantial  measure  of  genuine,  man-to-man  as 
sociation  between  members  of  these  two  races;  and  that  in 
the  future  such  association,  based  upon  a  fellow-feeling  of 
human  brotherhood  which  strikes  deeper  than  any  sense  of 
difference,  will  continue  to  increase,  tending  eventually  to 
make  the  Negro  people  an  inner  and  component  part  of  the 
general  community. 


GARVEY'S  EMPIRE  OF  ETHIOPIA1 

Probably  the  most  remarkable  of  race  conventions  that 
America,  the  cradle  of  liberty  and  the  nursery  of  nationalistic 
and  racial  aspirations,  has  ever  witnessed  was  held  in  New 
York  in  August  when  for  thirty-one  days  and  nights  the  three 

1  From  article  by  Truman  Hughes  Talley.  World's  Work.  41:264-70. 
January,  1931. 


THE   NEGRO   PROBLEM  365 

thousand  elected  representatives  of  the  Negroes  of  all  na 
tions,  states,  colonies,  and  territories  of  the  world  assembled 
for  thorough  deliberation  upon  the  past,  present,  and  future 
of  their  race. 

"We  are  met  here  tonight,"  Marcus  Garvey,  in  his  key 
note  speech  said,  "for  the  purpose  of  enlightening  the  world 
respecting  the  attitude  of  the  new  Negro.  We  are  assembled 
as  the  descendants  of  a  suffering  people  who  are  determined 
to  suffer  no  longer.  For  three  hundred  years  our  forefathers 
and  even  ourselves  suffered  in  this  Western  Hemisphere.  For 
more  than  five  hundred  years  our  forefathers  on  the  great  con 
tinent  of  Africa  suffered  from  the  abuse  of  an  alien  race. 

"We,  as  new  Negroes,  declare  that  what  is  good  for  the 
white  man  in  this  age  is  also  good  for  the  Negro.  The  white 
race  claim  freedom,  liberty,  and  democracy.  For  that  free 
dom,  that  liberty,  that  democracy  they  drenched  Europe  in 
blood  for  four  and  a  half  years.  In  that  bloody  war,  fought 
to  maintain  the  standard  of  civilization  and  freedom  of  democ 
racy,  they  called  upon  two  million  black  men  from  Africa, 
from  the  West  Indies,  and  from  America  to  fight  that  the 
world  might  enjoy  the  benefits  of  civilization.  We  fought  as 
men;  we  fought  nobly;  we  fought  gloriously;  but  after  the 
battle  was  won  we  were  still  deprived  of  our  liberties,  our 
democracy,  and  the  glorious  privileges  for  which  we  fought. 
And,  as  we  did  not  get  those  things  out  of  the  war,  we  shall 
organize  four  hundred  million  strong  to  float  the  banner  of 
democracy  on  the  great  continent  of  Africa. 

"We  have  absolutely  no  apologies  or  compromises  to  make 
where  Negro  rights  and  liberties  are  concerned.  Just  at  this 
time  as  the  world  is  reorganizing  it  is  also  reconstructing  it 
self,  and  everywhere  oppressed  peoples  are  striking  for  and 
obtaining  their  rightful  freedom.  Negroes  ol  the  world  shall 
do  no  less  than,  also,  strike  out  for  freedom.  Liberty  is  the 
common  heritage  of  mankind  and  as  God  Almighty  created 
us  four  hundred  million  strong,  we  shall  ask  the  reason  why 
and  dispute  every  inch  of  ground  with  any  other  race  to  find 
out  why  we  also  cannot  enjoy  the  same  benefits. 

"We,  as  a  people,  do  not  desire  what  belongs  to  others. 
But  others  have  sought  to  deprive  us  of  those  things  which 
belong  to  us.  Our  fathers  might  have  been  satisfied  to  have 
been  deprived  of  their  rights,  but  we  new  Negroes,  we  young 


366  SELECTED  ARTICLES 

men  who  were  called  out  in  this  war,  we  young  men  who  have 
returned  from  the  war,  shall  dispute  every  inch  of  right  with 
every  other  race  until  we  win  what  belongs  to  us. 

"This  convention  is  called  for  the  purpose  of  framing  a  bill 
of  rights  for  the  Negro  race.  We  shall  write  a  constitution 
within  this  month  that  shall  guide  and  govern  the  destiny  of 
our  four  hundred  millions.  This  constitution,  like  that  of  the 
greatest  democracy  in  the  world,  we  shall  defend  with  the  last 
drop  of  our  blood.  Wheresoever  I  go,  whether  it  is  in  Eng 
land,  France,  Germany,  Italy,  or  America,  I  am  told,  'This  is 
a  white  man's  country.'  Wheresoever  I  travel  in  this  nation 
I  am  made  to  understand  that  I  am  a  'nigger.'  If  the  Eng 
lishman  claims  England  as  his  native  habitat,  the  Frenchman 
claims  France  as  his  home,  the  Americans,  this  continent  as 
their  land,  then  the  time  has  come  for  the  Negroes  to  claim 
Africa  as  their  native  land.  If  Europe  and  America  are  for 
the  white  man,  and  Asia  is  for  the  yellow  man,  then  in  the 
name  of  God,  Africa  shall  be  the  home  of  the  black  peoples. 
We  have  been  dying  for  the  last  five  hundred  years — for 
whom?  For  alien  races.  The  time  has  come  for  the  Negro 
to  die  for  himself. 

"The  President  of  this  country  returned  from  Europe  and 
told  us  there  was  to  be  peace.  Lloyd  George,  Clemenceau,  and 
the  other  national  leaders  returned  to  their  countries  and  said 
there  was  to  be  peace.  But  the  handwriting  on  the  wall  shows 
that  the  bloodiest  and  greatest  war  of  all  times  is  yet  to  come 
— the  war  when  Asia  shall  match  her  strength  against  Europe 
for  the  survival  of  the  fittest  and  for  the  dominance  of  Ori 
ental  or  Occidental  civilization.  Men,  let  me  tell  you  this : 
the  hour  has  come  for  the  Negro  to  mobilize  his  forces  of 
four  hundred  millions  for  that  bloody  war.  The  time  has  ar 
rived  and  is  now  opportune  for  the  Negro  to  strike  for  African 
redemption. 

"It  is  apparent  that  it  is  left  to  the  Negro  to  teach  the 
principles  of  mercy  and  justice.  The  Negro  has  carried  those 
principles  with  him  for  thousands  of  years,  but  the  time  has 
come  for  us  to  call  a  halt.  Why?  Because  we  realize  that  the 
other  races  are  living  in  a  material  and  practical  age.  They 
do  not  regard  glorious  and  noble  principles;  they  regard  only 
those  things  that  will  make  them  happy  and  comfortable. 
While  the  white  man,  for  ages,  taught  us  to  despise  Africa 


THE   NEGRO   PROBLEM  367 

told  us  how  hideous  a  place  it  was,  inhabited  by  savages,  by 
cannibals,  by  pagans,  trying  to  persuade  Negroes  not  to  take 
any  interest  in  it,  they  have  gone  to  Africa  and  have  taken 
large  portions  of  it.  In  the  north,  south,  east  and  west  they 
have  helped  themselves  until  there  is  but  little  left  even  of 
the  interior.  But  the  hour  has  come  when  the  whole  continent 
of  Africa  shall  be  reclaimed  and  redeemed  as  the  home  of  the 
black  peoples.  We  shall  not  ask  England,  'Why  are  you 
here?'  nor  France,  'Why  are  you  here?'  nor  Italy,  nor  Bel 
gium.  The  only  thing  we  will  say  will  be  'Get  out  of  here/ 
And  because  we  mean  that,  we  believe  in  the  principles  of  jus 
tice  and  equity. 

"We  have  no  animus  against  the  white  man.  All  that  we 
have  desired,  as  a  race,  is  a  place  in  the  sun.  Four  hundred 
million  people  are  too  numerous  not  to  have  a  place  in  the 
sun.  If  sixty  million  Anglo-Saxons  can  have  a  place  in 
the  sun,  if  eighty  million  Germans  can  still  have  a  place  in  the 
sun,  if  seven  million  Belgians  can  have  a  place  in  the  sun, 
I  do  not  see  why  we  cannot  have  a  place — a  big  spot — in 
that  self-same  sun.  If  you  believe  that  the  Negro  should 
have  a  place  in  the  sun,  if  you  believe  that  Africa  should 
be  one  vast  empire  controlled  by  Negroes,  then  arise — and 
sing  the  national  anthem  of  our  people."  With  which 
"Ethiopia,  Thou  Land  of  our  Fathers/'  swelled  from  the 
thousands  of  throats  as  a  great  cry  out  of  the  wilderness. 

Within  a  week's  time  there  was  a  drafted  document,  the 
Declaration  of  Negro  Rights  and  Constitution  of  Negro 
Liberty.  The  finished  product  was  a  long  document  of  sixty- 
six  divisions  in  which  every  phase  of  the  Negro's  outlook 
upon  life  and  the  future  was  touched  upon  and  the  line  of 
conduct  every  adherent  must  follow  was  set  forth. 

The  preamble  of  this  constitution  states  that  "the  Negro 
people  of  the  world,  through  their  chosen  representatives, 
in  convention  assembled  in  Liberty  Hall  .  .  .  protest 
against  the  wrongs  and  injustices  they  are  suffering  at  the 
hands  of  their  white  brethren  and  state  what  they  deem 
their  fair  and  just  rights  as  well  as  the  treatment  they  pur 
pose  to  demand  of  all  men  in  the  future."  There  follows, 
briefly  summarized  in  twelve  paragraphs,  the  entire  category 
of  complaint,  after  which  are  enumerated  under  fifty-four 
headings  the  aspirations  and  intentions  of  the  regenerated 


368  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

race.     In  the  words  of  the  framers  the  more  important  and 
startling  of  these  decisions  are: 

"Be  it  known  to  all  men  that  whereas  all  men  are  created 
equal  and  entitled  to  the  rights  of  life,  liberty,  and  pur 
suits  of  happiness,  and  because  of  this,  we,  the  duly  elected 
representatives  of  the  Negro  peoples  of  the  world,  invoking 
the  aid  of  the  just  and  Almighty  God,  do  declare  all  men, 
women  and  children  of  our  blood  throughout  the  world 
free  denizens  of  the  world  and  do  claim  them  as  free  citizens 
of  Africa,  the  motherland  of  all  Negroes. 

"That  we  believe  in  the  supreme  authority  of  our  race,  in 
all  things  racial,  that  all  things  are  created  and  given  to 
man  as  a  common  possession,  that  there  should  be  an 
equitable  distribution  and  apportionment  of  all  such  things, 
and  in  consideration  of  the  fact  that  as  a  race  we  are  now 
deprived  of  those  things  that  are  morally  and  legally  ours, 
we  believe  it  right  that  all  such  things  should  be  acquired 
and  held  by  whatsoever  means  possible. 

"We  believe  in  the  freedom  of  Africa  for  the  Negro 
peoples  of  the  world,  and  by  the  principle  of  Europe  for 
the  Europeans  and  Asia  for  the  Asiatics,  we  also  demand 
Africa  for  the  Africians  at  home  and  abroad. 

"We   believe   in   the   right  of   self-determination. 

"We  believe  in  the  inherent  right  of  the  Negro  to  pos 
sess  himself  of  Africa  and  that  his  possession  of  same  shall 
not  be  regarded  as  an  infringement  on  any  claim  or  purchase 
made  by  any  race  or  nation. 

"We  strongly  condemn  the  cupidity  of  those  nations  who 
by  open  aggression  and  secret  schemes  have  seized  the  ter 
ritories  and  inexhaustible  natural  wealth  of  Africa,  and  we 
place  on  record  our  most  solemn  determination  to  reclaim 
the  treasures  and  possession  of  the  vast  continent  of  our 
forefathers. 

"We  hereby  demand  that  the  governments  of  the  world 
recognize  our  leader  and  his  representatives  chosen  by  the 
race  to  guard  the  welfare  of  our  people  under  such  govern 
ments. 

"We  demand  that  our  duly  accredited  representatives  be 
given  proper  recognition  in  all  Leagues,  Conferences,  Con 
ventions,  or  Courts  of  International  Arbitration  wherever 
human  rights  are  discussed. 


THE   NEGRO    PROBLEM  369 

"We  declare  the  League  of  Nations  null  and  void  so  far 
as  the  Negro  is  concerned  in  that  it  seeks  to  deprive  Negroes 
of  their  liberty. 

''We  declare  for  the  absolute  freedom  of  the  seas  for  all 
peoples. 

"We  demand  a  free  and  unfettered  commercial  inter 
course  with  all  the  Negro  peoples  of  the  world. 

"We  believe  all  men  should  live  in  peace  one  with  another, 
but  when  races  and  nations  provoke  the  ire  of  other  races 
and  nations  by  attempting  to  infringe  upon  their  rights,  war 
becomes  inevitable  and  the  attempt  in  any  way  to  free  one's 
self  or  protect  one's  rights  or  heritage  becomes  justifiable. 

"We  declare  that  no  Negro  shall  engage  himself  in  battle 
for  an  alien  race  without  first  obtaining  the  consent  of  the 
leader  of  the  Negro  peoples  of  the  world,  except  in  a  mat 
ter  of  national  self-defence. 

"We  protest  against  the  practice  of  drafting  Negroes 
and  sending  them  to  war  with  alien  forces  without  proper 
training,  and  demand  in  all  cases  that  Negro  soldiers  be 
given  the  same  training  as  the  aliens." 

Other  sections  of  the  document  deal  with  the  treatment 
of  the  Negro  in  political,  educational,  industrial  and  religious 
fields,  the  dominant  note  throughout  being  that  the  Negro 
must  be  accorded  even-handed  treatment  and  that  henceforth 
the  weight  of  combined  Negro  opinion  and  arms  if  neces 
sary  will  be  brought  be  bear  to  remedy  flagrant  evil  or  op 
pression. 

The  parent  body,  the  original  Garvey  enterprise,  is  the 
Universal  Negro  Improvement  Association.  This  body  is 
concerned  with  the  promotion  of  solidarity  among  the  ad 
herents  to  the  empire-building  organization.  It  is,  in  effect, 
the  political  complement  of  the  two  previously  described 
commercial  corporations.  Allied  with  it  is  the  Africian 
Communities  of  the  World  which  is  undertaking  to  develop 
those  portions  of  Africa  now  held  by  the  blacks  as  well 
as  later  to  take  a  hand  in  those  areas  which  they  may  re 
gain.  With  this  larger  and  more  distant  field,  this  joint 
organization  points  to  the  convention  just  held  and  the 
organization  perfected  throughout  the  Negro  world  as  its 
chief  accomplishment  to  date.  Eventually  and  in  conjunc 
tion  with  the  Black  Star  Line  its  leaders  declare  it  must 


370  SELECTED  ARTICLES 

grapple  with  the  problem  of  building  African  railroads, 
docks,  warehouses,  factories,  educational  institutions, 
churches,  homes  and  all  the  rest  of  construction  that  goes 
with  such  an  enterprise.  Also,  it  must  find,  transport  and 
regulate  the  supply  of  skilled  American  and  West  Indian 
Negro  labor  with  which  portions  of  the  black  continent  is 
to  be  modernized.  A  rather  large  order,  it  must  be  admit 
ted,  but  in  the  words  of  Garvey,  who  is  not  infrequently 
more  practical  than  visionary,  "It  may  take  fifty  years  and 
it  may  take  many  fifties,  but  it  will  come." 


14  DAY  USE 


\    RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 


LOAN  DEPT. 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below,  or 

on  the  date  to  which  renewed. 
Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recall. 


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